


Deliverance

by heavy_cream



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: Comatose Characters, Fantasy, Feelings, Friends to Lovers, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Plot, Preemptive Boyfriends, Rating May Change, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, not an au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:29:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 39,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25681348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavy_cream/pseuds/heavy_cream
Summary: Kotetsu was flirting with him, wasn’t he? He wasn’t just imagining it, was he? Barnaby felt his heart speed up as he reached out to take the flower, fingers feeling cold and numb. God how pathetic could he get really, almost thirty years old and he was completely unable to tell when someone was flirting with him.---Kotetsu and Barnaby have been circling each other for months, drawing closer and closer, and just as they seem to finally be able to connect, they get attacked by a NEXT user, a teenage boy with the power to control minds who traps them in a fairytale. They must now race against the clock to escape their own minds and make it back out before they forget what reality is.Entry forAugust Writers' Month
Relationships: Barnaby "Bunny" Brooks Jr./Kaburagi T. Kotetsu
Comments: 29
Kudos: 27
Collections: Writer's Month 2020





	1. Tattoo Blossoms

**Author's Note:**

> [August Writers' Month](https://writersmonth.tumblr.com/)
> 
> This is one single story, each prompt will serve as a chapter. Updates daily.
> 
> This takes place roughly two years after "The Rising", so Bunny is around 28 and since Kotetsu STILL has no official birthday (WRYYYYY) I'm using the wiki guestimate, so he's 39ish. This is not relevant to the story other than saying time has passed between "T&B: The Rising" and this.

Barnaby stepped out of his shop, carrying a wooden crate filled to the brim with flowers. Lush, pink poinsettias spilled over the edges, their petals rustling as he carefully placed the crate on the bench just under the large window. There were other crates there, with rich, orange marigolds, and soft, lilac hydrangeas, and silky, pink peonies. He bent down, gently arranging the flowers, brushing the velvety petals with the tips of his fingers and he smiled. He thought it was impossible to not feel soft in the presence of such simple and yet perfect beauty. His shop didn’t need any decoration, all it boasted was a yellow-white striped canopy, a big window that read _“Spring Bunny Blossoms"_ and the flowers did the rest. Heaps and heaps of them, arranged on wooden displays painted white, alongside the wall making the entire storefront fragrant like a garden. He picked up one of the peonies, brought it to his nose, smiled as he breathed in the sweet smell.

Just as on cue, the door to the shop next to his, opened. He looked over and saw Kotetsu step out of his door, dragging out a black-chalkboard sign with him, that read _“Wild Tiger Tattoo”_ in beautiful lettering. Their storefronts were polar opposites. Whereas Barnaby’s was painted a soft pink with white and yellow accents, and covered in soft pastel flowers, Kotetsu’s was all black. Wide windows lent a view inside where the furniture was all deep, brown leathers and forest green accents. And yet, Barnaby thought it suited him, this classic, old fashioned masculine aesthetic. Barnaby watched him as he arranged the sign. His hair was slicked back wetly, he was wearing a black vest and a white button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up baring his forearms, black tattoos standing out in relief against the white of the shirt, the designs twisting down all the way down to the back of his hands. When he turned around, Barnaby could see the edges of black ink curling up his neck out of his crisp, white collar, and it all together made him seem oddly elegant. 

Barnaby watched as Kotetsu grinned and lifted a hand in greeting and then stepped closer, stopping in front of him, just at the edge of his own shop, a neat line dividing the black and pink of both of their storefronts. Kotetsu leaned against his left shoulder, both hands sliding into his pants pockets and smiled warmly at Barnaby and it was one of those moments where Barnaby felt the world around them fall away. He looked handsome and at ease, a man comfortable in his own worn skin, and Barnaby couldn’t help feeling drawn by him.

Barnaby turned so they were face to face, twirling the peony in his hand, and Kotetsu leaned down to smell the flower, a soft smile curling his lips. Barnaby became acutely aware of his own heart beating hard against his chest, such an innocent gesture, such a soft and gentle action, and then Kotetsu opened his eyes, looked up at Barnaby from beneath his lashes. His smile turned slightly wicked, his eyes narrowed down to golden slits and Barnaby felt his mouth go dry. He swayed forward, just an inch, not really knowing what he was going to do and then-

“Cut!” The voice of the director cut through the silence of the set and making them both break apart. Barnaby blinked and suddenly all the noise came rushing back as the room came alive with dozens of people rushing to perform their tasks. Stagehands stepped forwards to arrange the props on the sets, make-up artists and hair-stylists came up to both Kotetsu and Barnaby to do retouches. Barnaby looked at Kotetsu again who gave him a chagrined smile and a shrug and Barnaby let out a sigh. 

“That’s a wrap everyone!” the director shouted and Barnaby was glad that they would be able to leave after all. A bell rang shrilly to signal the end of the shooting, everyone on set clapped and Kotetsu and Barnaby both thanked and excused themselves. They were escorted to the dressing rooms to change.

“Ah, I’m so glad this is done,” Kotetsu sighed, unbuttoning the vest with swift fingers while one of the stylists stood by ready to take the clothes from him. Barnaby untied the apron he’d been wearing and smiled indulgently at Kotetsu.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Barnaby said and thought about the moment with the Peony. Would Kotetsu like flowers, he wondered.

“You know I just don’t like these things. I still don’t get what this has to do with hero work,” Kotetsu muttered, shrugging out of his vest, and then out of his shirt. Barnaby watched as he unbuttoned his own clothes, looked at the fake tattoos starting from his elbows on. Kotetsu stood in his trousers and accepted the make-up wipes the stylist offered. Kotetsu stepped up to one of the mirrors to properly see what he was doing and Barnaby looked away. He was being foolish and inappropriate.

“It’s part of being in the business,” Barnaby answered easily as he shrugged out of this shirt and trousers. They’d had the same conversation countless times before and still, Barnaby enjoyed having the same discussion over and over again. “It costs money to have all the gear and the support we have. Doing a commercial every now and then is really a small price to pay,” Barnaby continued, picking up his own clothes. He put on his jeans and t-shirt and then sat down to put on his shoes.

“Yeah, yeah,” Kotetsu muttered and then sat down next to him, shrugging on his own shirt. Barnaby smiled.

“You know, you could have worn your own clothes for today’s shoot,” Barnaby remarked and Kotetsu leaned towards him.

“That’s exactly what I said!” Kotetsu said sounding still outraged about it. “At least they let me keep my own pants this time.” 

Barnaby smiled. “They are very nice trousers,” he agreed sweetly and Kotetsu gave him a baleful look.

“You gave these to me, you know,” Kotetsu said standing up to get his suspenders.

“That’s how I know they are nice,” Barnaby answered and went towards Kotetsu to help him clip on the suspenders. His fingers slid along the waistband with eased practice, clasping the fabric easily. Kotetsu looked at him over his shoulder, eyes narrowed.

“I knew it,” he said and Barnaby stepped away to pick up his jacket.

“You knew what?”

“They were expensive, weren’t they?” Kotetsu accused, gesturing at him while trying to put on his watch at the same time.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Barnaby replied, tossing his hair over his shoulder and then easily falling into step with Kotetsu as they leave the studio. The trousers were bespoke, of course, but that was beside the point.

Kotetsu continued to complain about fancy pants and overpriced clothes as they made their way out of the building.

“Anyway,” Kotetsu finally said with a wave of his hand. “Dinner?” he asked and Barnaby smiled, absurdly charmed. 

“Of course. It’s your turn to pick,” he said and they strolled leisurely down the road. 

“Well, I was thinking about your place and you can cook that thing you did the other time, with the scallops.”

Barnaby gave him an unimpressed look. “Really? You want me to go cook after a whole day of work?” Barnaby asked, entirely for show, he would gladly cook for them both, especially because Kotetsu always helped, and Barnaby loved those moments they’d spend in the kitchen together. Still, it would do no good to just give in. Exactly as he expected, Kotetsu jumped ahead to stand in front of him, bowing slightly, hands behind his back and Barnaby stopped, placing a hand on his hip.

“Please? It’s just, nothing ever tastes as good as when you do it,” Kotetsu pleaded and then he looked up and added: “Besides, all I really want is to do is be alone with you after today,” Kotetsu said softly and then brought forward his right hand, holding up a velvety, pink Peony. Barnaby blinked surprise. They were so close, the flower between them remained fragrant even now and just like it had happened on set, Barnaby felt the world around them fall away, they no longer were on a busy sidewalk in Sternbild. Instead it was just the two of them, face to face, two men looking at each other with something fragile blossoming between them. 

This was flirting, wasn’t it? He wasn’t just imagining it, was he? Barnaby felt his heart speed up as he reached out to take the flower, fingers feeling cold and numb. God how pathetic could he get really, almost thirty years old and he was completely unable to tell when someone was flirting with him. Barnaby took the flower gently, his fingers brushing Kotetsu’s as he did so and Barnaby wished he knew what to do, what to say. _Do you mean it? Peonies mean romance, did you know that? Was this just an accident?_

But instead, Barnaby brought the flower to his nose, breathed the sweet scent in, and then said: “You’ll buy the wine.” 

Kotetsu grinned. “Of course,” he answered but didn’t move away. Barnaby thought it would be easy to just lean forward, to close the distance between them just like he had wanted to do before on set. The moment seemed to stretch out between them, the tension growing with each second and then-

“Stop!” 

Barnaby and Kotetsu jumped apart and turned to look towards the shout. A commotion had formed further ahead down the sidewalk, a young kid was barrelling towards them, pushing pedestrians out of his way two men right on his heels. Kotetsu firmed his stance and grabbed the kid as he tried to run past him.

“Let me go!” The kid yelled, struggling to free himself but Kotetsu held on to him tightly.

“Hey it’s okay, you’ll be fine,” Kotetsu said but the teen shook his head vehemently.

“Don’t let them catch me, please, don’t-” he pleaded, looking over his shoulder even as he struggled in Kotetsu’s grip. It was clear that he was terrified. Barnaby and Kotetsu shared a look, a silent conversation took place between them, and an agreement was reached. Barnaby leaned down to be eye to eye with the kid.

“It’s okay, we’ll sort it out,” he said, trying to sound reassuring even as the men caught up to them. They were middle-aged, one of them was wearing what looked like a lab coat, the other one was in regular street clothes, his hair the same shade of brown as the kid’s, and with a burly built.

“Thank you for catching him,” lab coat panted out and Barnaby subtly stepped in front of the teenager. 

“Sure, what seems to be trouble here?” Barnaby asked, being extremely polite about it and burly focused on him, it was apparent that he was spoiling for a fight and just barely containing himself.

“It’s just a misunderstanding,” he said staring past Barnaby and he felt Kotetsu step closer. 

“You see, all we know is that there are two men running after a teenager on the street, so you must see how we might be concerned about that,” Barnaby said, still exceedingly polite, but with unyielding steel underneath. 

Burly seemed to take offense at that. “I don’t have time for this bullshit, Jack, stop it, we have to go back,” he said trying to push past Barnaby, who stood his ground.

“Let’s all calm down,” Lab Coat was saying nervously and Barnaby felt that the situation was already too out of control. He looked over at Kotetsu who looked back at him grimly.

“Fuck this, I’m calling the police,” Burly said and the kid, Jack, started struggling again desperately.

“No please, no, don’t,-” he said panicking and his eyes started glowing blue. 

“Oi, wait a second-” Kotetsu said, holding on tight to the struggling teen, and both he and Barnaby activated their power simultaneously, their eyes meeting again.

“Hey, it’s okay-” Barnaby said reaching out, grabbing his shoulder, and just then the situation hit critical mass. The teen closed his eyes and screamed and then suddenly, Kotetsu ad Barnaby found themselves engulfed in bright light. The world fell away, silence enveloped them and then after just seconds, there was absolute darkness.

In the middle of the street on a Thursday night in Sternbild, two men and a teenage boy collapsed onto the ground, completely and entirely unconscious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the prompt was "AU" but errr, well, technically every fanfic is an alternate universe already, right? *sweats* I'll probably get a bit...creative with some of these prompts, but I swear I'll stay within bounds! 
> 
> ♥


	2. Lucid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 2: quarantine

Agnes stormed down the corridor in the hospital, her presence strong enough, violent enough, to have people move away from her as she approached the front desk.

“Ma’am,” the nurse started and broke off when Agnes slammed her palm down on the desk.

“I’m Agnes Joubert, I’m here on behalf of Apollon Media trying to find out about two of my heroes that were taken here. Who do I need to speak to get some answers on that?” she asked in a rush and nurse squared her shoulders.

“Unless you are next of kin, I can not provide you with any information.”

“I am an authorized party, I have legal rights towards both of them,” she argued, spoiling for a fight that never came.

“Agnes.”

She turned when she heard her name and saw Ben walking towards her, coffee in hand. “You came quickly, come. I’ll take you to them,” he said, sounding tired and weary. Agnes gave the nurse one last look and then turned to walk with Ben.

“What the hell happened? Why wasn’t I notified?”

“It happened nearby, Kotetsu and Barnaby had just left the studio when they collapsed. There was a doctor present when it happened, Dr. Henson, he called it in directly and they were rushed to this hospital. I’m Kotetsu’s emergency contact, so they notified me first. I came here with Saito, we were together at the lab, he is talking to Dr. Henson right now,” Ben said, catching her up quickly and she appreciated his efficient way. 

He led them to a small waiting room where Saito, a man she assumed was Dr. Henson and another man were all involved in a heated argument. 

“What the hell?” Ben exclaimed clearly surprised by the turn of events, but the men didn’t even seem to notice them.

“I don’t care what happens to them, they have no business getting involved in a family matter, they could die for all I care!” the man shouted and Saito sputtered outraged.

“They were trying to protect a kid who was so afraid of you that he ran away. What exactly were you doing to him?” Saito accused and Dr. Henson stepped in between, both hands up, palms out.

“Now please, accusations are not going to help-”

“I didn’t do _shit_ ,” the man shouted and tried to show himself into Saito’s face. Dr. Henson intervened, trying to hold the irate man back.

“Mr. Blyton-”

“Well you must have done something, that kid was terrified enough to use his NEXT power,” Saito continued and the man snarled.

“That god damn NEXT power is the whole problem!” he shouted and Agnes had enough.

“Enough!” she shouted and silence descended immediately. She pointed at Dr. Henson. “You, speak. From the beginning. Explain to me exactly why my two main heroes are currently in a coma?”

“Yes, ah, ma’am. Ah, you see, that is indeed Jack’s fault. He-”

She lifted a hand. “Who is Jack?”

“Ah, of course, Jack Blyton, he is Mr. Blyton’s nephew.”

“Okay, continue.”

“Right, ah, Jack is a NEXT user, and it’s his powers that have, unfortunately, created this entire situation.”

“What exactly is his power?” She asked and Dr. Henson made a face. 

“We don’t have an exact grasp on it, it just manifested recently,” Dr. Henson hurried to explain when he saw Agnes gearing up for another verbal lashing. “As far as we have been able to determine, he has the ability to control minds, although exactly how, we don’t know.”

Agnes frowned and looked at Ben. “You said they had been quarantined. If this is about telepathy why are they isolated?” she asked and Dr. Henson cleared his throat.

“It’s not so much because of them but because of Jack, he is in the same room as them. We believe his powers require touch to affect other people. When he activated his powers, both Mr. Kaburagi and Mr. Brooks were touching him. When the ambulance came, one of the MT’s touched Jack directly and received, well, sort of like a shock.”

“A shock,” Agnes repeated.

“A mental shock? He experienced intense pain but didn’t lose consciousness. It’s like he was repelled. We decided to place them in isolation to ensure that nobody attempts any further direct touch.”

Agnes let out a breath and crossed her arms. “Alright, he’s a touch telepath. So what now?”

Dr. Henson looked at Mr. Blyton who ignored him. “Well, as I mentioned, we don’t know much about his power, but earlier today, he was responsible for placing one other person into a coma, although Jack has given us to understand that that’s not the usual case,” he continued and Mr. Blyton snorted.

“That brat is a liar, wouldn’t trust a single word he says,” he said derisively. Agnes ignored him. 

“In any case, that’s not the only thing that’s unusual. In the other case that we know of, even though the person is in a coma, he always retained consciousness, but this time, he has fallen unconscious as well and we don’t know why or to be honest, we can’t even tell if this is a result of his NEXT power or not,” the doctor finished and Agnes tapped her fingers against her arms. It wasn’t particularly enlightening information all in all. 

“Who is this other person who’s in a coma right now?” she asked.

“My sister,” Mr. Blyton answered as he sat down on one of the dingy chairs in the little waiting room they were occupying.

“That useless brat used his freak power on my sister and knocked her out. The little shit was too much of a coward to come out and say that though, didn’t admit to it until I shook it out of him,” he said and Agnes was certain that the ‘shaking’ hadn’t been metaphorical. 

“That’s enough from you,” Agnes interrupted him coldly. “So let me get this straight. Jack is a NEXT with the ability to control other people’s consciousness with his own as long as they are touching, during which he has the ability to remain lucid except this time, for reasons that are unknown to us, he fell unconscious.”

“That’s correct, yes,” Henson confirmed.

“I’m guessing that he was running away from you,” Agnes shot Blyton a flinty look, “because he apparently put his mother in a coma earlier this morning, which he didn’t admit to until you probably threatened it out of him. After which he ran away and straight into the arms of Tiger and Barnaby.”

Blyton ignored her so Dr. Henson nodded instead. “Yes, that’s correct.”

“Right, I’m guessing Mrs. Blyton- what’s her name?”

“Ah, Alicia-”

“-Alicia is still in a coma, otherwise Mr. Sunshine over there wouldn’t be here anymore,” Agnes finished staring Blyton down, daring him to talk back. He didn’t.

Dr. Henson sighed. “Yes, that’s correct. As I said, we know very little about his powers, I didn’t have a lot of time to talk to Jack about them earlier today before he ran away. I am unclear on whether this had happened before today, the way I understood, it’s a bit more like ‘lucid dreaming’, where Jack can control what is happening, but I don’t know how often he has used his ability and to which extend. I don’t know if he is fully aware of his powers and abilities, and I do not know how well they work. I’m sorry, ma’am, I would like to tell you more but the truth is, we just don’t know much more about this ability.”

Agnes took a deep breath and placed her hands on her hips.

“Well then, let’s fix that,” she said and turned towards Blyton. “It’s obvious that you don’t know anything about his powers, otherwise we wouldn’t be in this mess now. Who might know?” she asked and Blyton snarled at her.

“How the hell would I know?” he spat and she stepped forward, leaned down right in his face.

“If you love your sister the way you pretend you do, I would imagine you would be doing a lot of really hard thinking right now trying to answer that question. Who would know? His dad?”

“I don’t know who that loser is. He just knocked my sister up and then bailed.”

“Hmm,” Agnes said, tapped a finger against her hip for a moment and then whirled around, walking towards her purse to fish out her phone. She speed dialed her team. “Cain, put me on speaker. I’m going to be sending you some information on Jack Blyton and I need you to find everything you can about him, starting with his birth certificate.”

“Okay, who is Jack Blyton?”

“The NEXT user who has currently taken both Tiger and Barnaby out of commission,” Agnes said sharply, her annoyance at that fact evident. “His mother is Alicia Blyton, I need to know who the father is. How old is he?” she asked turning towards Henson.

“Thirteen,” he answered.

“He’s thirteen, check out the schools near his home address. I need to find out anybody he’d used his power on, kid that young probably told his best friend at the very least.”

“Alright, it’s going to be dicey, he is underaged,” Cain answered and Agnes turned, smiled predatorily at Blyton who was still sitting in the chair fuming.

“No worries, I have his next of kin right here with me who will gladly sign an authorization form,” she said sweetly and Blyton snarled but kept his mouth shut.

“Got it, boss.”

“Mary, you are in charge of finding out everything you can about telepathic NEXT powers, especially touch-telepaths and everyone else who has the ability to manipulate minds.”

“Ah, sure, like Maverick,” she said bluntly and Agnes stopped for just one beat, made a sour face, and then tossed her hair back. “Yes, including him. I want as much detail as you can get me, I want to know exactly how those powers work.”

“What are you looking for exactly?” Mary asked.

“I want to see if there is somebody else who has that same power.”

Mary whistled, the sound coming across tinny over the auricular. “Alright boss, we’ll get on it.”

Agnes snapped her phone shut and then turned back to Dr. Henson. “You, keep me posted on any change in their condition. If one of them sneezes I want to know about it. Saito,” she turned to address him. “I know medical science is not your thing, but you know a lot about NEXT powers and how they manifest. Anything you can figure out to get them awake would be helpful.”

“I’ll talk to Mary. Also, you are not my boss,” Saito said and Agnes gave him a steely glare.

“You,” she said turning to Ben, and this time her face softened, even if for just a bit. “Someone should let Tiger’s family know. I will let you decide when and how. We are keeping this out of the news but there are always leaks, no matter how good we are,” she warned and Ben nodded.

“I’ll handle it.”

She nodded decisively. “Good,” she turned and whatever warmth had been present in her face vanished as she looked at Blyton. “You stay here and wait for me to come back and then you will be really, really cooperative, you don’t want to piss me off,” she said and then turned around, already flipping open her phone again and stalked out of the small room, heels clicking menacingly down the corridor. She needed to get a printer and she grinned gleefully as she approached the front desk again, ready for round two with the nurse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My internet has been the pits all day. Plus a bloody heatwave kept giving me a headache, so have an update at 2 am oops. It still counts if I haven't gone to sleep yet, right? >_>


	3. Thaumaturgy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 3: magic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's 3am c:

Kotetsu opened his eyes and blinked against the bright light until his eyes seemed to focus. With a groan he sat up, rubbing his forehead as he did and looked around. They were clearly no longer in Sternbild, instead they were lying in an open field, green grassy fields extended as far as the eye could see on one side, mountains rose on the other side and when Kotetsu turned around he could see houses. He rolled towards Bunny who was lying facedown next to him. He shook his shoulder gently.

“Hey, Bunny, wake up,” Kotetsu urged and sighed relieved when Bunny immediately reacted.

“Kotetsu? What-” Barnaby muttered pushing himself onto his knees and looking around, blinking blearily. “Where are we?” Barnaby asked taking in their surroundings and then he focused on Kotetsu and frowned. “What are you wearing?”

“Same thing you are, probably,” Kotetsu replied and got to his feet. Barnaby looked down at himself and sure enough, he and Kotetsu were wearing similar outfits. Kotetsu was wearing what looked like a leather vest, in deep brown, with five brass clasps holding the garment closed on the front. The vest had a stiff a collar and was decorated with brass buttons alongside the shoulder seams. Underneath he wore a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his forearms. His pants were forest green, form-fitting, running along his long legs and which disappeared into knee-high, slip-on boots, made out of buttery leather. 

“As for where we are,” Kotetsu continued and reached down to give Bunny a hand, “I have no idea, but maybe the kid can give us some answers,” Kotetsu said and pointed towards a tree nearby. The teen, Jack, sat huddled underneath it, knees pulled up, arms slung around them. He’d been looking at them and quickly pressed his face against his knees, trying to hide from them. 

Barnaby dusted himself off, taking note of his own clothes. Cotton trousers in deep gray, red, burnished leather, lace-up boots almost identical to the ones he already owned. He was wearing a white jacket, cotton as well by the feel of it but the fabric felt stiff. The fastenings on the front shone golden, and matched the buttons on his armguards which were the same color as his boots.

They crossed the short distance towards where Jack was sitting and Kotetsu went down on his haunches, arms casually resting on his thighs.

“Hey,” he said gentle and Jack’s shoulders twitched but didn’t move otherwise. “Are you okay?” Kotetsu asked and after a moment Jack moved his head in what Kotetsu interpreted as assent. Barnaby stood behind his partner, not trying to crowd the clearly spooked kid.

Kotetsu moved his head to a side, kept his pose casual and relaxed. “I’m Kotetsu and that’s my partner, Barnaby. You might have heard of us, we are heroes,” Kotetsu continued and perhaps it was the easy tone or the fact that he was completely not addressing their current situation that made Jack relax enough to look up from his knees. 

“Uhm, yeah, yes,” he said, eyes flicking between Kotetsu and Barnaby. “You are Wild Tiger,” he said and Kotetsu grinned.

“Yeah, that’s right! So you know you don’t have anything to worry about,” Kotetsu continued and Jack’s posture relaxed a fraction more. Barnaby leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees.

“Your name is Jack, right?” Barnaby asked and again the kid nodded. 

“Jack Blyton,” he said sounding a bit more at ease still. His arms had lowered to his sides so that his hands were clasping his shins. Barnaby smiled, tried to be reassuring about it, even though he had never been good at putting people at ease.

“Jack,” Kotetsu said drawing his attention, “do you know where we are?” he asked, still gentle and the kid looked away, pulled his hands into his lap, hiding them between his upraised knees and torso. He nodded.

“That’s good,” Kotets continued, “can you tell us?”

“Azura,” the boy answered and Kotetsu blinked.

“Azura?” he repeated and Barnaby straightened, frowning. That sounded familiar, had he heard that name before?

“Jack, did you bring us here with your NEXT ability?” Barnaby asked and Jack looked away and nodded.

“Can you take us back?” Kotetsu asked and Jack pulled his legs up tight again.

“I don’t know how,” he answered and Barnaby and Kotetsu exchanged a look. 

“Can you tell us what your ability is? Maybe we can help you figure out how to use it,” Barnaby suggested reasonably.

“I can make people dream,” he said and Barnaby was detecting a pattern where the more answers they got, the less sense everything seemed to make.

“What do you mean by that?” Kotetsu asked and Jack continued looking away, idly pulling out grass, looking at the ground as if it were the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen.

“When people touch me, I can make them dream.”

“So this is a dream?” Barnaby asked and Jack nodded. 

“Alright, then all we need to do is wake up?” Kotetsu asked and Jack shrugged a noncommittal answer. Kotetsu looked at Barnaby. “Any idea how we do that?”

Barnaby rubbed the bridge of his nose and was aware for the first time that he was not wearing glasses. “I have no idea,” he confessed. “I’ve heard about lucid dreaming, where through certain techniques you are supposedly able to control and direct your dreams but I don’t know how to actually do any of that. Besides this isn’t our dream, is it?” Barnaby wondered and turned to Jack again. “This is your dream, right Jack?”

Jack ignored them, continued pulling the grass and Barnaby started to feel frustrated. 

“Do you know how to wake up, Jack?” Kotetsu asked, still gentle, still calm and Jack did nothing at first, and then gave a minute shake of his head. It was clear that they were not going to be getting any answers from him anymore. God, why did these things always happen to them?

“Alright, what do we do then?” Barnaby asked, feeling the need to move, to take action, to just do something because he was increasingly feeling like hurling something against a wall. Kotetsu must have sensed it because he stood up and stepped close to Barnaby, placed his hand on Barnaby’s arm, and squeezed reassuringly. 

“Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out Bunny,” he said and Barnaby wanted to believe him, he really did, except they were both in the same boat, the boat being that they were stuck in teenagers dream with no way out.

“Kotetsu, if this is a dream we need to wake up, we don’t even know what is happening in the real world. The last thing I remember was being on the sidewalk in the middle of Sternbild. If we are asleep, if we are unconscious, then it means that all three of us are lying on the street somewhere, completely defenseless! What if something has happened to us?” Barnaby urged.

“Bunny, calm down-”

“We could be injured, we could be-” Barnaby was suddenly seized by another entirely more terrifying thought, “what if this is not real?” he asked and Kotetsu blinked, confused.

“What?”

“What if this isn’t really happening? What if this is not a NEXT power at all, what if I’m just hallucinating? Or I’m unconscious and this is a dream but it’s just me?” Barnaby continued and he could hear his own voice rising, could feel the panic grabbing his throat and he is instantly thrown back to the time where Maverick had manipulated him, where nothing had felt real for _months_ afterward. His panic ratcheting up so quickly he didn’t notice how things around them had changed, how the sky was no longer clear blue but had darkened, big, stormy clouds swallowing up the sun. 

“How do I know you are real? How do I know I’m not all alone in here, how do I know I’m not going mad?” 

“Stop it!” 

Barnaby’s increasingly louder panic was cut off abruptly by Jack’s shout. Both he and Kotetsu seemed to come back themselves at the same time and they looked over at Jack. The boy was still sitting on the floor but he was leaning forward, eyes squeezed shut tightly as he pressed the palms of his hands against his ears as if trying to block out all the noise, and it _was_ noisy, the wind had picked up and was sweeping in increasingly violent increments across the field. Barnaby felt his own panic fall away, becoming in turn hyper-aware of his surroundings as Kotetsu kneeled back down next to Jack and started to talk soothingly at him. 

“Hey, it’s okay, it’s all fine,” Kotetsu was saying, one large hand curling around Jack’s arm, and the boy seemed to squeeze his eyes closed tighter. “Nothing will happen to you, I promise. Everything is okay, we’ll keep you safe,” Kotetsu continued, voice steady and gentle and something must have gotten through because Jack carefully opened his eyes, looked tremulously at Kotetsu. 

“You don’t have to be sacred, okay, we are not mad and we’ll never hurt you, okay?” Kotetsu continued and as Jacky slowly lowered his arms Barnaby noticed that the landscape changed again. The wind had stopped blowing and the storm clouds were slowly dissipating. He stepped closer to Jack, went down on his haunches so they were eye to eye.

“I’m sorry I got upset,” Barnaby said earnestly, “I didn’t mean to scare. It’s okay,” he said looking at Jack but he could see that his words were having an impact. The clouds disappeared and the sun started to break through. 

The storm had, quite literally, passed.

“There,” Kotetsu said, smiling reassuringly, “we are all good, okay?” 

Jack nodded, his face flushed but his shoulders had relaxed back down and he was no longer trying to hide behind his legs. 

“Good,” Kotetsu continued and then glanced at Barnaby briefly. “Listen, why don’t we go somewhere that’s a bit more comfortable than the ground? I’m an old man, I can’t just sit on the floor all the time, I won’t be able to get up later!” he said with a laugh and Barnaby knew that Kotetsu had gone toe to toe with military-grade combat androids without using his powers, that Kotetsu was just as fit as he was, if not more, and that this whole ‘old man’ routine was just a distraction. Bunny should know, Kotetsu had used it on him all the time, and just like it had with him, it worked this time again. Jack bit his lip for a while, his hands went back to the grass, pulled it nervously.

“There is a town nearby, we can go there?” he said sounding uncertain but it clearly was what Kotetsu had been expected. He grinned and slapped his knee.

“Good, let’s do that, why don’t you lead the way?” he said and straightened, made a show of arching his back so it popped and then comically hunched forward, rubbing his lower back dramatically. It was such an over the top old man routine that it was impossible to be meant seriously, and it was clear that even Jack could tell it was a joke. He stood up easily, blades of grass falling from his trousers as he did so.

“Okay, we have to follow that road,” Jack said pointing at the only path visible and waited until Kotetsu nodded, to start walking. They left the grassy field, Kotetsu and Barnaby walking a few steps back behind Jack. Kotetsu leaned in close, reached out with a hand, fingers touching Barnaby’s hand gently.

“You okay?” he asked softly, barely a murmur, but he spoke just as earnest as he had with Jack, and Barnaby couldn’t help but smile. 

“Yes,” he confirmed and when Kotetsu didn’t seem convinced, he reached out and took Kotetsu’s hand in his own and squeezed it tight. “I’m alright. Let’s get to the town,” he said and after a beat, Kotetsu squeezed his hand just as tight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things I've learned: I suck at describing clothes holy crap. Also, I realized halfway through that Kotetsu is basically dressed like Flynn from Tangled hahahahaha. OH WELL! If you want to know, Barnaby's inspiration was [this](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/atelierseries/images/3/32/A13_Gino.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/269?cb=20120614073942). My idea was to sort of keep what they were already wearing and just give it a sort of fantasy spin... sort of. Really the clothes don't matter omg.


	4. Kin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 4: long-distance relationship

Ben swirled the coffee in his styrofoam cup, lost in thought as he sat in the visitor's chair in Saito's lab. After spending another hour, Saito had decided that if he were to do any sort of proper research he needed his lab and Ben had decided to join him since there was paper-work he needed to prepare and it gave him _something_ to do. If there was one thing that he and Kotetsu shared was that they were terrible at being idle. Being at the hospital, not even able to be in the same room with Kotetsu had just made him feel useless. He should be doing everything he could to help his friend, shouldn’t he? Even if that meant filling out paper-work and bringing Saito coffee. 

That’s exactly what they were doing now, with Saito spouting out a million ideas a minute, most of them making no sense to Ben but that was par for the course. At some point he would unavoidably hit brilliance, that’s how Saito worked. So Ben listened with half an ear while he continued staring into his coffee.

It had been hours since Barnaby and Kotetsu had fallen unconscious, and Ben was acutely aware that he would have to make a decision soon. He would rather that Muramasa heard the news from him than from some sensationalist report. Besides, if the heroes were called out for the night, their absence wouldn’t go unnoticed. 

“Saito, is there any danger for them remaining unconscious?”

“Other than them _being_ unconscious?” Saito replied, dry like the desert and Ben nodded.

“Other than the obvious, yes.”

“See that’s the problem. A coma is a state of unconsciousness in which the person doesn’t react to the environment and they can’t be woken up. Usually, a coma is the result of injury or illness. Recovery from a coma depends, to a considerable extent, on the original cause of the coma and on the severity of any brain damage. Some patients will make a complete recovery while others, for example, those who have suffered head trauma, could have some physical or intellectual impairment that may require physiotherapy or occupational therapy. In some cases they may need care for the rest of their lives,” Saito explained thoughtfully.

“But the thing is that the coma that Tiger and Bunny are in, is neither caused by injury or illness. So in theory, they are fine and should be normal once they wake up. But the truth is that we don’t know much about telepathic abilities. They are extremely rare and not a lot of studies have been done to further understand them,” Saito continued explaining, typing on his keyboard clearly annoyed by this fact.

“So what you are saying is that you don’t know whether they would be fine after all this.”

Saito’s eyes remained expressionless but his mouth turned down at the corners and he hunched over even more. “The rule with any coma is that the less it lasts, the better,” he said and then went quiet. He didn’t need to say that they were already into the second hour of unconsciousness, with no change whatsoever.

Ben stood up and threw away the coffee and regretted it immediately since it left his hands unoccupied. He was about to go back to the vending machine to get yet another coffee when the door to the lab opened and Karina stepped in. She looked agitated and it was apparent that she had come running towards the lab.

“Is it true?” she asked, clearly upset. In the past three years, Karina had outgrown her juvenile crush and yet her fondness for the older man had remained.

“Yeah,” Ben confirmed with a nod. “How did you know?” he asked.

“Agnes just told us,” she stepped into the lab and placed her hands on her hips. “She didn’t give us any details, just that Barnaby and Tiger were attacked and that we would be going out without them today. What happened?” she demanded seriously.

“It was an accident, they were trying to help a teenager who turned out to be a NEXT user. He is a touch-telepath and he activated his powers in a panic, and now all three are in a coma,” Ben summarized. 

“Alright, but they weren’t injured?” Karina asked and Ben shook his head.

“No physical injuries, they are just unconscious and the doctors at the hospital have not had any success in waking them,” Ben added in an understatement of the century. The doctors hadn’t even attempted to touch them yet. 

“And the kid is unconscious too?” Karina asked.

“Yes, which is extremely unhelpful,” Saito answered sourly. 

“So if he’s a touch-telepath, are they all like, in a heap together or what?” Karina asked confused and Ben and Saito exchanged a look.

“Actually, they are not,” Ben said and Saito turned towards his desk to make a note.

“That’s a good point, perhaps they don’t need to be touching anymore once they are ‘linked?” Saito wondered out loud and Karina stared at them incredulously.

“Is there something you actually know about this kid?” she asked, stalking towards Saito.

“We are trying to find out more about his ability but it’s taking time. His mom is in a coma too and his uncle is an asshole. So Agnes has set her minions on the task to research telepaths and I’m doing the same. We are trying to find if there is another NEXT user who has the same power but that’s very unusual. As far as we know, the only ones to have ever shared abilities are Tiger and Bunny.”

Karina stared at him. “You are looking for someone with the same power?” she repeated and Saito frowned.

“We know we might not find them but it’s worth a try,” Ben answered nothing that Saito was probably ready to engage in a fight. 

Karain stared at them both for a moment, and then said: “Like, are you all actual idiots?” 

Saito and Ben looked at her taken aback.

“What?” Ben asked and Karina made a sweeping gesture with her hands.

“Have you two morons forgotten that Kotetsu’s daughter has the ability to copy NEXT powers?” she asked, her voice rising with each word so that by the end of it her question hung heavy in the air. Both Saito and Ben stared at her stunned.

She was right, they were idiots

Saito turned to Ben. “How did you forget about that?” he said accusatorily and Karina threw her hands into the air.

“I swear men are useless!!” she exclaimed and Ben couldn't help agreeing with her. Here he had been busy wallowing and worrying, letting his anxiety get the best of him, that he had completely forgotten about Kaede’s power. He needed to kick his own ass but that could wait until later.

He fished out his cell phone and dialed Muramasa. Ben looked at the clock, it was gone nine already. They had already wasted enough time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact! I had forgotten about Kaede too. Last night, as I went to bed at 3am (oops) I suddenly remembered Kaede and I had this galaxy brain moment of OF COURSE KAEDE!
> 
>  **SO MY MUSINGS BELOW COULD BE POTENTIAL SPOILERS SO IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THEM, PLEASE IGNORE EVERYTHING UNDER THIS SENTENCE!**  
>   
>   
>   
>   
>   
>   
>   
>   
>   
>  Even though I don't regret at all writing this, I have inadvertently written myself into a corner for two reasons. 
> 
> 1) in chapter 2 I had established that when the MTs attempted to touch Jack, they received a shock. I had no plans on going anywhere with that, it literally existed to fill the "quarantine" prompt. So now I have two options:  
> a) I leave it and then either come up with an idea to make Kaede be able to touch Jack. (like maybe she can approach him further ahead when he no longer is in such a heightened state of emotion)  
> b) I go back and remove that line in chapter two, and leave the prompt to be a bit more metaphorical and less literal. (By being in this "dreamscape" they are effectively quarantined from the rest of the world)
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> 2) I didn't account for Kaede to be able to join them, so I have not prepared a role for her in this scenario at all. It's still early in the game so I do have time to figure it out, but I'm flat out honest, I have no idea what her role could be in either progressing the plot or developing the theme of the story.
> 
> Ahhhh, lads, writing is hard ya'll....


	5. Augur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 5: soul mates

The dirt road was wide and clearly well-traveled, the ground hard and compacted by the constant passage of people and carts and possibly horses. To the left, their view of the horizon was obscured by grassy hills, to the right the field extended until it hit a mountain wall in the distance, and behind them nothing but the road that wound through hills and disappeared into the distance.

It was the kind of place that Barnaby had ever only seen in movies, never in real life since he had lived in Sternbild for as long as he could remember and he was acutely aware of the silence that surrounded them. Or perhaps, that wasn’t entirely accurate. There were noises, the breeze blowing over the grass, sounds of birds in the distance. Noises of nature being alive in a way that was completely alien to Barnaby. Next to him, Kotetsu took a deep breath and released it slowly.

“Ah, this reminds me of when I was a kid,” he said and smiled at the memory.

“That’s right, I forget you didn’t grow up in Sternbild,” Barnaby replied, consistently taken aback by that fact. Kotetsu grinned at him.

“Have you ever been to Oriental Town?” Kotetsu asked Jack, clearly attempting to engage the kid in conversation that had nothing to do with their current situation. Barnaby couldn’t decide whether that was a good idea or not. It was very clear that Jack was going through something at the moment, had probably been going through something for quite some time now. And even though Barnaby could now as an adult understand the importance of engaging with the outside world, Barnaby also remembered what it was like being a teenager himself. Talking had been the last thing he had wanted to do back then and pretending things were normal had been somehow worse. He watched Jack, who was still walking a couple of steps ahead of them, shake his head after a moment.

“Ah, well,” Kotetsu continued undeterred, “it’s a small town a couple of hours outside of Sternbild, farmland mostly, and it’s surrounded by mountains. I grew up there with my brother. We'd spent the summers running around in our garden, it’s so big it even has a small creek running through it and we would always end up bathing there on the really hot days. We'd always get into trouble because we'd get back home with our clothes all wet,” he said, laughter in his voice, and then tacked on, almost casually, “do you have any brothers Jack?”

“No,” Jack said quietly, “it’s just me and my Mom and, uhm Uncle Richard.”

Barnaby exchanged a look with Kotetsu. “Is that the man you were-” Barnaby stopped and rephrased, “we met earlier?” he asked instead and Jack nodded.

“He seemed pretty upset,” Barnaby chanced and regretted it instantly when he saw Jack’s shoulders hunched over. 

“He’s always like that,” he said mulishly and kicked a small pebble in the middle of the road, an impressive finality in his voice and Barnaby decided to drop it and opted to watching him instead. They didn’t know how old Jack was but he thought he couldn't be older than fifteen. He thought of the kids that same age that he met during his time at the orphanage. Kids that had run away from their homes or foster homes. Sometimes they would stay only for a few days or weeks before they were returned to their families. Sometimes they would run away from the orphanage as well.

He hadn't understood these kids back then. He hadn't understood how anyone would choose to not be with their parents, how they could have possibly preferred to live alone or on the streets, or orphanages. He would have done everything to have his parents back, he thought he would have endured anything no matter how bad as long as he could be with his mom and dad. He'd naively believed that there was nothing as bad as death, that everything could be fixed as long you were alive and he had fostered a resentment towards these kids who had chosen to be away from their families.

He knew now that things were not quite as easy and straightforward as that, and the older he got, the more he realized that his childhood had been an exception in many ways, and had remained idealized and frozen in time. Many of the kids he grew up with at the orphanage had been abandoned, some at birth, some older, or had been taken away from their abusive homes. Their link to their families existed as a festering wound and they struggled with the knowledge of being unwanted. A struggle that was foreign to Barnaby. He had never doubted the love of his parents, knew that they would and had done anything and everything for him. Had protected him even beyond their deaths. His grief was uncomplicated and straightforward. They had loved him and he had lost them and it hadn't been fair but it had happened regardless. 

Looking at Jack he wondered in which category he fell. If he would have been one of those kids that had gone running looking for refuge at the orphanage, or if he would have been one of the kids that would be removed from his home by some faceless state institution. Or if he was just like Bunny had Bunny at that age. Angry and lost.

He had been a rebellious youth in his way, hyper-focused on finding out about his parents’ murder to the point of consistently getting in trouble for it. He skipped class, snuck out after curfew, picked fights with anybody who had tried to stop him, and patrolled the streets trying to find clues. His memories of that time were hazy, like most of his memories were nowadays. Mostly he remembered being frustrated and angry, so angry at everything and everyone. He looked at Jack and thought that they weren't that different in that sense. There was something simmering underneath his skin, furious and frail and Barnaby can see in him, those kids that had run away from home. But Barnaby had always known, even as a teen, that running away had never solved anything.

As a teen, he had never wanted to run away, not even when he was sneaking out in the middle of the night. He had never left with the intent to never return, that wasn't what he had wanted. No, as a teen all he had constantly wanted was to run _towards _something, had desperately looked for a target for all that anger and fury. In hindsight, he could now see that Maverick had recognized that same urge and had seized it. He had given Barnaby a target, a mission, something concrete to work towards, a purpose, and Barnaby had latched onto it greedily. Finally, there had been a goal, there had been something that he could focus all his energy on, and the restlessness had left him, his anger had banked and simmered for years.__

__Maverick had used him, exploited him, all the while using kindness and understanding to do so, had built a foundation of trust so solid that when it had come down, Barnaby had had a bona fide breakdown. It had taken Barnaby years to come to terms with that, with the betrayal and the lies and manipulation. And, if he were completely honest, there were wounds that still lingered, and the consequences of years of manipulation, emotional and mental, had had a cascading effect in his life._ _

__He looked up at Kotetsu then. He was one of those consequences. After the year they had spent apart, a year where Barnaby had taken it upon himself to work actively through all of the tangled mess of emotions, it had become apparent to him that, for all the progress he had made, he still hadn’t been where he had wanted to be. The whole fiasco with _Golden Ryan_ had been evidence of that. The fledgling trust between him and Kotetsu hadn't held and he knew that it wasn't just him who had been at fault, that Kotetsu had played an equally strong part in it all, but the whole event had shown Barnaby that he still had work to do. _ _

__And even now, two years after that, the two of them seemed to be stuck in a bizarre sort of stalemate, where Kotetsu felt so achingly close to him and yet so unreachable, and Barnaby didn't know how to bridge that gap. Ever since he had first met Kotetsu, there had been a warring desire within him, to reach out and open up while at the same time needing to keep him at bay. He thought of the moment just before Jack, where Kotetsu had given him a pink peony and it had seemed momentous at the time, there had been something there at the time, and yet, now…_ _

__Kotetsu turned to look at him, tilted his head slightly._ _

__“You okay?” Kotetsu asked gently and what the hell was he supposed to answer to that? Again he remembered the same questions he'd had what now felt a lifetime before: _Do you mean it? Is this just an accident?__ _

__“Yes,” Barnaby said after a beat too long, but Kotetsu just reached out, curled his hand briefly around his arm before letting him go. Barnaby took a deep breath and focused on the road ahead. The hills to the left sloped down, evening the ground and revealing behind them what distantly looked like the ocean and Kotetsu let out a surprised ‘oh’. Barnaby felt the air blow through his hair, could now increasingly smell the salt of the ocean, and in the distance, seagulls were cawing eagerly. They were only a few meters away from the houses now and Barnaby put everything else out of his mind for the moment, there more important things that they needed to deal with first._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FEW THINGS!
> 
> This takes place roughly two years after "The Rising", so Bunny is around 28 and since Kotetsu STILL has no official birthday (WRYYYYY) I'm using the wiki guestimate, so he's 39ish. This is not relevant to the story other than saying time has passed between "T&B: The Rising" and this.
> 
> Second, sorry I am one day behind but I realized that I really had to take time to properly plan out this story because it's so much more complicated than I thought it would be. (filed under: why do I hate myself??) So I spent two days basically broadly outlining the story and I will also outline each chapter because there are a lot of key moments that need to happen in order to advance plot, theme and character development, and since Kaede is now part of this story as well, I had to factor that additional dynamic. 
> 
> Thanks for being patient and please I encourage all of you leaving comments to keep me honest! Ask questions! Ask for clarification when things are unclear or confusing! Point out plot holes or just things that make no sense! This is the first time I'm writing something like this so it's a learning process for me.
> 
> *bows*


	6. Stormhaven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 6: ocean

By the time they reached the first house, it had become apparent that what had looked like a small town from afar, was anything but. The dirt path gave way to a wide, cobblestoned road that wound downhill. The houses, scarce and separated from each other at the beginning, became more and more tightly packed with alleys and side streets branching off as they went along. And just as the sidewalk got more populated with houses and stores, so did the streets, bustling with people the more they ventured into the town. The people they encountered, anything from kids playing to merchants, to men and women busy with chores, paid little attention to them, nothing more than a passing glance. It was clear that they were not wary of foreigners.

Or, Barnaby thought with a grimace, this too was part of the dream and outside logic didn’t apply. He looked at Jack and thought about the moment out in the fields when the skies had darkened with a storm. The thing was, it didn’t _feel_ like a dream. It all felt incredibly normal, from the clothes he was wearing to the town he was walking through at the moment. They passed a flower shop, so eerily similar to the one they had constructed on set that it made Barnaby do a double-take. There were differences, small ones, but the colors, the layout of the storefront, it was almost the same as the one he’d been at earlier today.

“This place is a lot bigger than what I thought it would,” Kotetsu commented, drawing Barnaby’s attention.

“I wonder what it’s called,” Barnaby mused, still frowning, the sense of familiarity kept increasing with every step they took. 

“It’s Stormhaven Harbor,” Jack said and Kotetsu and Barnaby shared a look, it was the first time he had spoken unprompted and then they turned the corner and the street gave way to a wide plaza. They were still halfway down the hill, but the plaza opened up so that they had a view of the rest of Stormhaven, the main street led all the way down to the port, winding through houses and buildings and stores. From their viewpoint, they could see all the way down to the ocean stretching out as far as the eye could see. The harbor was busy, ships docked with sailors and dockers busy moving freight off the ships, and off to one side, a large, lighting house stood proud at the shorefront of Stormhaven. 

This was not just a small town, this was a big, bustling port city, a hub of activity all the way from the ocean, to the marketplace and the commerce streets and construction sites everywhere even the buildings surrounding the plaza had scaffolding erected. This was a city in the infancy of what would surely someday become a massive sprawling capital, Barnaby thought, just like Sternbild, another port city which hundreds of years ago had probably started similar to this.

There was a noise behind them all of the sudden, an ominous groaning, and Kotetsu and Barnaby whipped around, instinct and training kicking in instantly, and watched the scaffolding of one of the buildings break apart and give away. The two men standing on the scaffolding swayed tried to gain a hold on the very building they had been working on, but both Barnaby and Kotetsu had already assessed the situation. Years of experience, of training and work, kicked in instantly and everything else fell away. Eyes shone blue as they activated their powers, as they moved in unison, without the need to talk, running towards the danger. Barnaby jumped onto the lowest rung of the scaffolding to gain enough momentum and caught one of the men as he tumbled over the edge. Kotetsu had gone towards the other, had used all his strength to jump straight up and catch the other man mid-air in a firemen carry, and let the impulse carry him all the way to the other side of the scaffolding. He landed with a grunt, flexed his knees to dissipate the impact. He turned around to see Bunny land behind him safely, but his relief was short-lived as he saw that scaffolding break apart completely, heavy planks of wood and piles of bricks came crashing down perilously towards the ground, right onto where a young child stood frozen in fear.

“Bunny!” he shouted, already sprinting up but he was too far, he wouldn’t be able to make it in time. Bunny had one step of advantage and it might be enough, just enough if he moved fast, and just as he thought that he saw Jack sprint forward and jump on top of the little girl, shielding her with his body moments before Bunny did. Barnaby stood over them arms raised, back hunched, as wood and brick tumbled around them. By the time Kotetsu reached them it was all over. He still had time left on his power, so the entire ordeal had lasted less than a minute. 

“Is everyone alright?” he asked, kneeling down to check on Jack, touching his shoulder reassuringly. He was still holding tight onto the little girl who was crying, sobbing wetly, and Kotetsu stroked Jack’s arms to encourage him to release the girl. He looked up at Barnaby. “Are you okay?” he asked, reaching up to touch Barnaby’s hand, feeling the need to reassure them both that they were fine.

Barnaby straightened up, shook his head, and rolled a shoulder. He had taken the brunt of it after all.

“I’m fine,” he said, squeezed Kotetsu’s hand in return and let him go, turning towards the men who were still sitting dazed and confused on the floor. While Barnaby checked on top, Kotetsu focused on Jack again.

“Hey it’s all over now,” he said gently, “you can let go, it’s all fine,” he continued and after a moment Jack’s hold slackened, the movements looking stiff and awkward and Kotetsu was sure that he was still in shock.

The moment the little girl was released she started crying in earnest, calling for her mother, and before Kotetsu could do anything about that, a woman came running from the crowd, almost stumbled in her haste to get down on her knees to embrace her daughter.

“Oh thank the goddess,” she said with a voice filled with tears and Kotetsu let out a breath. The crisis had passed. She kissed her daughter and held her tight before he focused on both Kotetsu. “Thank you, thank you so much,” she said and Kotetsu patted Jack’s back.

“Thank him, he was the one who jumped in to protect her,” he said, and Jack bowed his head, his hands closed into fists on his thighs as he shied away from the attention. Kotetsu turned around and saw Barnaby standing behind him, looking up towards the building with a frown.

“Everything okay?” Kotetsu asked looking up as well, just in case something else was attempting to come back down the fast way, but he couldn’t detect any danger.

“Yes, it’s just…” Barnaby trailed off, clearly lost in thought and Kotetsu knew that there had been something bothering him for a while now, ever since they had awoken on Azura.

“What is your name?” the woman was asking and Kotetsu turned around to see she was addressing Jack. 

“Jack,” he answered after a moment, still looking away but the woman didn’t seem to mind, her gratitude apparent in the way she wouldn’t let go of her little girl. Barnaby watched the scene unfold, felt something long forgotten unfurl in the back of his head.

“Jack,” she said, and just like that, everything in Barnaby’s mind connected, and he suddenly realized why everything had sounded so familiar. 

“I know this story,” he said to himself, and Kotetsu, who had stood back up blinked at him but Barnaby was looking at the woman and then said in unison with her: “to those of noble heart, greatness is bestowed upon them.” 

Kotetsu looked between them, clearly utterly confused by what was happening. 

“Bunny?” he asked, walking back to him.

“Ever since Jack said that we were in ‘Azura’ I kept thinking that that name sounded familiar, and I thought it again when I heard Stormhaven, and that’s because I have heard all of this before. It’s a story,” Barnaby said softly, leaning in close and watching Jack as he spoke quietly to the woman and got on his feet as well.

“A story?” Kotetsu repeated, things making even less sense now.

“A children’s book, my parents- they used to read me stories for bedtime, and one of them was this.”

“Do you remember what it was about?”

Bunny looked around the plaza, memories coming back fragmented, starting first with impressions before turning into images. “Vaguely, but I know the beginning. The hero, a traveler to Stormhaven, performs an act of selflessness, by sacrificing himself to save another, and he is heralded as the chosen one.”

Kotetsu looked at Jack, who was standing awkwardly to the side, not moving closer to them but also not moving away. “Chosen one?” he asked but before Barnaby could continue they were interrupted by a commotion. The bystanders who had come to gawk and help scattered as a company of guards entered the plaza, armored in shiny silver mail and carrying spears. Jack did move close to them then, and Kotetsu instinctively pulled him close, placed him between Barnaby and himself, both of them subtly turning to cover each other’s back. 

“Is this supposed to happen?” Kotetsu asked through the corner of his mouth, feeling his tension rising quickly. Barnaby nodded, his mind racing trying to form precise memories out of the thinnest of recollections.

“Yes, this is how the adventure starts, Jack saves one of the town’s people and then the King shows up to give him a quest,“ Barnaby said just as the group of guards split open to allow passage for a knight to come through. Even from the distance, it was clear that this was no ordinary soldier. The armor glinted russet gold in the sun, the design far more intrinsic than the simple mail the rest were using, and with a cape pinned to the right shoulder, red cloth falling elegantly down all the way to the hip. And as the knight came closer they realized that it was a woman, their gait dominant and yet familiar as she stepped past the guards, and Barnaby and Kotetsu realized that there was so much more that was familiar about her other than her gait. She stopped in front of them, tossed her long dark brown hair over her shoulder, and pierced them with familiar, steely green eyes.

“I have a quest for you-” she said, voice deep and commanding, and there was no question of a doubt that the woman who stood in front of them, no matter how impossible it was, was Agnes Joubert herself, who then she smiled, slow and sultry and wicked and said: “-hero.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really struggled with today's chapter and I kept wondering why I was having such a hard time until my friend said: "well you have slept for two hours" and well, that's probably that.


	7. Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 7: hurt/comfort

Ben’s call to Muramasa went to voicemail, not unusual, he was still working at the bar. So he decided to give him some moments before ringing Anju, he had never enjoyed calling her, no matter how much Kotetsu insisted on having her as his first emergency contact and had always preferred to reach out to Muramasa instead. 

“I’m going to the lounge, do you want something?” Ben said to Saito who ignored him, busy muttering nonsense to himself as he fiddled with his computer. Ben left him to his musings, thinking about getting another coffee that he really shouldn’t drink, but he wanted to give Muramasa time to get back to him and Ben had grown incredibly tired of waiting. Even though it was already past nine in the evening, he was not surprised to see the heroes hanging about in the lounge. They would often linger after work and training to just mingle and so seeing Nathan helping himself to coffee at the vending machine was not unusual at all.

“Ben,” Nathan greeted him when he was close, his voice uncommonly serious. “Do you have any news?”

Ben shook his head and slid his hands in his pockets. “Nothing other than what Agnes told you. We’ll let you know if anything changes.”

“Karina told me about the kid’s NEXT power,” Nathan said, stirring his coffee absently. “It must be hard on handsome, having his mind controlled again. I know what it’s like, to be in a dream you can’t wake up from,” Nathan said, walking towards one of the tables and Ben followed.

“What do you mean?”

Nathan placed the wooden stirring stick neatly on a napkin, crossed his legs elegantly as he sat back. “Don’t you remember? On Justice Day two years ago, where I almost burned down the hospital, while under the influence of, what’s-his-name,” Nathan closed his eyes, tapped one perfectly manicured fingernail against his cheek, “Wang?”

And just like that, it all clicked. “Wong. Johnny Wong,” Ben said and Nathan snapped his fingers.

“That’s the one. I don’t know if it’s exactly the same power, but it seems at the very least similar. I really don’t know how much… _control_ he had over my dream, but in the end I was able to wake myself up from it, so there is hope for Tiger and handsome,” Nathan continued and Ben was once again reminded of how poorly they had gone about all of this. They clearly should have spoken plainly to all of the heroes at once. Already Ben had gotten two valuable pieces of information out of his evening moping around the Apollon offices.

“How did you wake up?” Ben asked, leaning forward eagerly. 

“You know, it’s a bit hard to say. In the end, I just came to terms with what was haunting me in my dream. The dream, in essence, it was a representation of my own fears and insecurities, and once I faced them, it’s like I was suddenly aware that I had the control over it,” Nathan frowned and shook his head. “It’s very hard to explain, it’s a sensation more than anything else.”

“Were you aware that it was a dream?” Ben asked, taking out his little notepad and writing down things before he forgot about them. 

“Hmm, sort of… it was more like how when you are having a nightmare and you know it’s a nightmare but it _feels_ real. Awareness was both there and not. Like I do remember hearing Pao Lin, even though I didn’t understand at the time that I was.”

“What do you mean?” Ben asked.

“Well, the television was on in the room I was in, the show was being broadcasted and I heard Dragon Kid’s voice in my dream. Well, I guess it would be more accurate to say that I heard the words, I didn’t know who was saying them, I didn’t even know it was something that had happened outside of my mind until much later when we talked about it.”

“So there is a possibility that they might be able to hear us,” Ben mused and Nathan shrugged one elegant shoulder. Ben was about to ask him something else when his phone vibrated in his pocket. He took a look at it and stood up when he saw it was Muramasa.

“I need to take this,” Ben apologized, “thank you so much for this though,” he added, waving his notebook in the air and Nathan smiled.

“Not at all, glad I could help,” he said softly but Ben had already hurried down the hall.

“Thank you for calling me back, Muramasa,” Ben said as he walked towards his office.

“Is my brother alright?” he asked, voice tight.

“He is in hospital but stable. He had a run-in with a NEXT user earlier this evening,” Ben said and then proceeded to explain the series of events as quickly as he could. He’d just finished by the time he reached his office. He closed the door behind him, heard Muramasa let out a deep breath.

“Okay, what are the doctors saying?”

“This is an unusual situation so for the moment they are monitoring both Barnaby and Kotetsu to see how their situation develops. We have a few leads that we are looking into but the truth is that psychic NEXT users are rare and there is very little we know about them. Actually, that is something I wanted to talk to you about specifically.”

“About what?” Muramasa asked, confused.

“We are thinking that Kaede might be able to help us understand his power,” Ben said and heard Muramasa’s hmm.

“Because of her copy NEXT ability,” Muramasa murmured thoughtfully. 

“Exactly, if she copies Jack’s ability we could learn more about how it works, and perhaps we could also find a way of waking them up.”

“I see,” Muramasa said and then went silent.

“Muramasa,” Ben said after a moment, sitting behind his desk, “this is entirely your decision, you are Kaede’s caretaker, so you decide whether you tell her anything about this or not.”

Muramasa let out a huff over the line. “You don’t know Kaede very well, do you? Kid is too smart for her own good, believe me I won’t even have to suggest it, she’ll come up with it on her own and then probably break into the hospital herself. She is so much like her father sometimes," he said with a sigh but it sounded more fond than weary. "I’ll talk to her right now, we’ll probably drive down tonight, it’s going to take a few hours to get there in my old van.”

Ben tapped his finger against the desk. “Talk to Kaede and let me know what you decide, I’m pretty sure I can get you a faster ride.”

“Alright”, Muramasa agreed, sounding uncertain but promised to call back soon. The moment he disconnected the call, Ben rang up Agnes.

“Yes?” she answered curtly, the sound of keyboard keys clicking in the background.

“I called Kotetsu’s family,” he said and he heard the keys go quiet in the background.

“That was a lot sooner than I expected. Did something happen at the hospital?” she asked urgently.

“No, but, ah, Karina reminded us of something. Kotetsu’s daughter has the ability to copy other NEXT powers,” he said and heard something like a hand smacking a flat surface from the other side of the phone.

“Of course! How could I forget? Is she coming?”

"I'm waiting on confirmation but knowing her, she probably is. They would be driving down since the last train-.”

“That will take _hours_ ,” she interrupted and Ben smiled. “I’ll have one of the small news helicopters go pick her up. Find out if she is okay with that.”

“I will, she won’t be coming alone-”

“Don’t worry about that, I’ll sort it out. Go get confirmation and I’ll set up the chopper.”

“Thank you, Agnes,” Ben said sincerely and he swore he could _hear_ her roll her eyes.

“Having those two out of commission is terrible for ratings, I want them back on the street and in front of my cameras where I can produce my show,” she said rapid-fire and Ben let her get away with it.

“Alright, one more thing, Fire Emblem reminded me of Johnny Wong-”

“Who?”

“Ah, remember that whole business two years ago, during the Justice Day festival where-"

“Oh, the old man!” Agnes interrupted again.

“Yes, he also had the ability to put people in a coma-like sleep and could up to a certain point manipulate their dreams. Nathan actually gave me a lot of information on his own experience.”

“Talk to Saito. He is a pain in the ass but he is brilliant, don't tell him I said that, but if anybody could do anything then it's him. I’ll have Mary Rose bump wong up to the top of the list,” she said, the clicking of keys resumed tenfold. “Let me know when you got approval for the chopper.”

“I will,” Ben said and the line went dead. Ben scrolled through his phone contacts again and tapped Muramasa’s number to send him a message and thought that Kotetsu was incredibly lucky for the family he had, both the one in Orient Town and Sternbild.

_So, how does Kaede feel about flying?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's 3 am c:


	8. Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 8: eight

“Come, we must make haste,” Agnes said and turned around, not waiting for an answer. The people at the plaza were still standing around, watching avidly and the guards quickly moved to clear a path. Kotetsu, Barnaby, and Jack hadn’t moved and it wasn’t until one of the guards gave them a subtle push that they started moving along.

“Oi, no need to shove, we are going,” Kotetsu said annoyed but leaned down to speak to Jack. “Don’t worry, just stay close,” he said reassuringly and Jack looked at him for a moment, before nodding silently.

“Where are we going?” Barnaby asked, mildly surprised when Agnes looked over her shoulder.

“To the Temple of the Goddess,” Agnes answered as if any of those words clarified the situation in any way.

Kotetsu leaned close to Barnaby. “Okay, I get that this is not the real Agnes, but, why is she here in the first place?” he asked under his breath. 

Barnaby had lifted a hand, his index finger covering his lips in his habitual thinking pose. “I’m not sure. Jack’s ability is telepathic and so if we are in a… let’s call it a dream for the sake of argument, if we are all linked in one single dream, then it could be that part of our consciousness is leaked into the dream as well.”

“You said earlier that this was a story. Is everything happening the same way as it should then?”

“I don’t remember the details that well,” Barnaby admitted, “but the captain is a character from the book. The captain is the one who will give the hero the main quest of the story, the only difference is that in the book, he was a man. The fact that we see Agnes is, I think, is just us filling in the blanks for how this character should look,” Barnaby added.

“Hmm, makes sense,” Kotetsu said after a moment and Barnaby looked at him.

“It does?”

“Well, yeah,” Kotetsu blinked, lifted a hand to wiggle it about in the air, “if you think about it, in real life Agnes is the one who calls us to give us assignments. I mean, she gives us our orders and dispatches us to the scenes. A quest is really the same thing, isn’t it?” Kotetsu explained and Barnaby cocked his head to a side. It wasn’t completely senseless. There was some sort of dream-logic to that reasoning and if that was true, then it could also mean that they might have more power of the dream than what he had originally thought.

Barnaby looked at Jack once more. Jack seemed familiar with the story, he had known about Azura and Stormhaven but if his theory was right, this could mean two different things. Either Jack knew the same story, or he was responding to Barnaby’s own memories. Both were equally possible but it would imply vastly different things when it came to the way Jack’s power worked. Barnaby resolved to speak with Jack as soon as possible. It was paramount that they learned more about Jack’s powers. 

He looked up as they turned a corner and took in what clearly was the temple Agnes had talked about. It was a narrow, tall building, turrets reaching high into the sky and Barnaby thought it looked a bit like a church. The building was made out of white stone, the sunlight bouncing off of it so it seemed as if the stone itself was illuminated. In the center was a wide arch with a massive wooden gate that stood open wide. On each side of the door was a row of long stained glass windows, each depicting a picture. 

They stepped into the Temple and he blinked to adjust to the different lighting. It was dimmer inside, the only light source coming from the windows themselves, the ceiling was a high dome, almost invisible in the darkness. The room itself wasn’t that big and it was entirely dominated by the statue right in front of them. The figure of a woman that seemed to be emerging from the very wall behind her, raised up high in front of them. Her hair carved into stone made it seem alive like it was blowing in the wind. Her face was turned upwards towards the sky, a face of mercy and clemency, her arms were raised upwards in front of her, her hands close together cupping what looked like a crystal ball that seemed suspended in the air. She shone in the sunlight, the windows placed in such a way that illuminated her perfectly, her kind and pious face, and as Barnaby’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he realized that the ball in her hands was made out of water. There was water coming out of the wall behind her, which collected in a pool at the bottom, making the entire statue look almost like a fountain if it weren’t so regal. It was clear that this more than a place of prayer, was a place of worship and Barnaby who had never considered himself a particularly religious person still felt the power places like these held.

Their entourage of guards had remained outside the temple. Agnes had stopped in front of the statue and kneeled, bowed her head in reverence. Kotetsu and Barnaby looked at each other, uncertain what they were supposed to do, but before they could decide, Agnes spoke.

“Your arrival was heralded by the Goddess,” Agnes said, still kneeling on the floor but looking up. Her cape pooled on the floor behind her, and she was a stark contrast against the cool, white and greys of the statue in front of her.

“It was?” Kotetsu asked, never missing a moment to be tactless and Barnaby elbowed him. Agnes however seemed unfettered.

“Yes,” she said and stood back up, still looking towards the Goddess. “Long, long time ago, Azura was a world of magic. Back then, our people had the power to control the oceans, to command the winds, to create fire, to call upon lightning. It was a time of greatness.” 

“But great power does not always bring out greatness,” she continued, her voice somber. “As time passed, these powers began to corrupt us, they bred greed amongst us, created a cycle of avarice and envy that plunged the world into darkness. Wars broke out, fronted by warriors with powers so strong that they leveled entire kingdoms, and soon there was no single nation left that wasn’t locked into terrible battle. One by one, nations fell until only four remained, locked in a stalemate that would end with all four losing. There was no victory left at this point, too many lives had been lost, too much of the world had been destroyed and become barren. And it was during this moment of darkness, where there was no more hope left, that the Goddess came to us,” she said and they all turned to look at her, at her kind face and her arms raised up towards the heavens.

“She said to us: ‘your strength is not the magic that you wield, but what lies beneath, only when you let go of the power that you seek will you be able to obtain peace’ and so we did. Azura lost the magic but at last, after hundreds of years, we had found peace. The four remaining Kingdoms agreed to seal away their magic forever, and each Kingdom was granted a symbol that would hold within it the best qualities of our people. The Kingdom of Ice received the emblem of knowledge, the Kingdom of Fire the emblem of passion, the Kingdom of Earth received the emblem of patience, and the Kingdom of Wind received the emblem of spirit. They would serve as a reminder that our noblest qualities are the ones that will lead us to prosperity and so everything we knew about magic was destroyed. Soon no one would know how to master the elements anymore,” Agnes turned to face them, left hand resting on the hilt of her sword strapped to her waist, “until now,” she finished, face turned grim.

“What happened now?” Kotetsu asked, clearly enthralled by the story and Barnaby couldn’t help but feel charmed by his obvious investment, in spite of the circumstances.

“For the first time in eight hundred years, a Sorcerer has appeared, who has acquired the knowledge and the abilities of the forbidden magic that we thought lost, and he has slowly begun destroying the emblems that have sealed away the magic of the world. If all four emblems are destroyed, then the magic will return to this world as well,” she said gravely, “and this time, he will be the only one capable of wielding it, and he will become unstoppable.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a terrible weekend for no reason like, nothing happened?? But just the whole day went by without me doing anything and I sort of just felt under the weather. I still feel sort of weird, like I've had the worst stomach ache today?? idk. Anyway, I will catch up with my chapters throughout the week.


	9. Malady

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 9: illness

“What does this have to do with us?” Barnaby asked in the silence that followed.

“The seals have already been destroyed, right?” Jack said and Barnaby was surprised he had spoken at all.

“The Kingdom of Earth was the first to fall, and then followed the Kingdom of Ice and the Kingdom of Fire. Three seals have been destroyed already, only one remains, the emblem of Spirits still stands.”

“That’s good, right? That one still stands,” Kotetsu said and Agnes continued without acknowledging him.

“There is a prophecy amidst our Legends. Eight hundred years ago, the four kingdoms sealed away their magic, but they were still afraid that evil would befall them, and so the Goddess promised, that for as long as one emblem remained, that there would be hope, for in moments as dark as those, a hero would arise, one who would selflessly sacrifice himself to save another one, who would be worthy of wielding the power of the emblems” Agnes said and she stepped forward, stopping in front of Jack. “A hero, just like you,” she said and Jack looked at her with such longing, that Barnaby felt his own heart break. Kotetsu must have felt something similar, for he placed a hand on Jack’s back and kept it there. 

“I’m not a hero,” Jack said looking at the floor. “I’m not a hero at all.”

“Hey,” Kotetsu said, going to his haunches so he could look Jack in the face, “you saved a little girl today, that’s what a hero does. Being a hero is not something you are, it’s something you do,” he said and Jack looked at him, something frail like budding hope shone in his eyes. 

“Just like the Goddess said, you have come in our darkest moment, now where our Kingdom, our world is in great danger. We need you,” Agnes said, “but you must choose your own destiny. Down this path lies greatness but it will not be without trials nor tribulations. There will be many great challenges you will have to face, but the rewards will be just as grand. Do you accept?” She asked, crossing her arms sternly and Jack looked back on the floor.

“We will go with you?” Kotetsu said and Jack twisted the hem of his shirt nervously. Barnaby debated for a moment and then decided to gamble. He leaned forward to catch his attention and waited until Jack looked at him.

“This is your dream, isn’t it?” Barnaby said and Jack looked away, his face flushed with an emotion that teetered between shame and embarrassment. “Jack,” Barnaby said, angled his head to try and catch his eyes again, “when I was a kid, I really liked this story,” Barnaby continued and Jack glanced at him briefly. “I think this story means a lot to you, doesn’t it?” Barnaby asked and Jack shrugged. “I think you want to tell us this story, right? But the thing is, you have to say yes in order to tell the story,” Barnaby continued reasonably and then waited. It would either work or it wouldn’t, but he knew that a stalemate like this wouldn’t bring them further at all.

“What if-” Jack started, his hands smoothing out the wrinkles of his linen shirt. “What if I’m scared?” he said, sounding small and this, this was something Barnaby could work with. 

“Then do it scared,” Barnaby said simply and Jack looked at him confused. “The important thing is that you do it if scared is the only way you know how to do it, then do it scared,” Barnaby said and placed his hand on Jack’s back, his fingers overlapping with Kotetsu’s.

“Bunny is right,” Kotetsu said and Jack looked at him. “Fear… it’s like a disease. If you don’t fight it, it will take you over, and the only way to win is by doing the things that scare you. You don’t have to do it alone, we will be with you, right Bunny?” Kotetsu said.

Barnaby nodded. “Yes,” he said simply and Jack looked forward again for a moment before he gave a tiny nod.

“I’ll do it,” he said and even though he sounded uncertain he looked at Agnes directly, and then something strange happened. Suddenly without warning, the wind picked up inside the temple, whirling into a tornado with a howl, and Barnaby and Kotetsu reached out to each other blindly, hands clasping on forearms, while they also pulled Jack close to them. The statue of the Goddess seemed to glow and when Jack looked up he saw that it was the orb she held in her hands which was glowing. It swirled surrounded with light and air and with the blink of an eye vanished, only for it to appear right in front of his face. He reached out to it, hands clasping firmly and as sudden as the wind had started, it died back down. Everything turned back to normal except that now, Jack held in his hand a small, glowing orb.

“Is this-” Barnaby started, blinking at the ball of light in Jack’s hands.

“It is as the prophecy foretold,” Agnes said and just as she finished, the ball seemed to explode, beams of light flew out suddenly and vanished in seconds. The orb was now empty, nothing but a crystal ball.

“What happened?” Kotetsu asked, had they accidentally broken it? 

“Everything is as it should be,” Agnes said and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “This is your quest, hero,” she said, squaring her shoulders, hand on the hilt of her sword, looking like the commander she was. “In order to wield the power of the emblem of spirit, you must first prove yourself worthy of it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was not intending on writing this today. Originally this was going to be part of Chapter 8 but it became so long and unwieldy I split it up and then halfway through I was struck by inspiration so it fit the prompt nicely. Also this is not what was planned in my outline SO WHO KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT!
> 
> :D
> 
> But, ah, it's nice to be able to write smoothly. The whole weekend was such a chore, idk what it really is? Maybe burned out? Maybe because this is such an atypical thing to write? I keep second-guessing myself, wondering like "is this something people even want to read?". All new experiences for me. 
> 
> Also the next prompt is bunnies and I HAVE NO CLUE WHAT TO WRITE. THE IRONY IS NOT LOST.


	10. Bunny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 10: bunnies

“What exactly does that mean?” Kotetsu asked and Agnes answered, still looking at Jack. “What just happened to the orb and all the light-thingies?”

“Each hero must go on a journey, that is the way of a hero. To overcome the challenges, one must face them, and to face them one must experience them. A ship is safest when it’s at port, but that is not what ships are built for,” Agnes said and Jack stared at her with wonder. She went down on one knee then, armor glinting regally in the setting sun, bathing her in gold and red. “The emblem will show you the way, have no fear about that. You must leave Stormhaven, for here lies only the beginning of your journey. You will know where you will have to go next,” Agnes said and stood back up.

“Perhaps it would be best for you to stay for the night and depart tomorrow. We will find a room for you at the inn. Rest for you have a long journey ahead,” Agnes said and gestured to one of the guards standing outside. Kotetsu, Barnaby and Jack knew they had been dismissed. Jack slid the crystal ball into his pocket, it was slightly too big for it to fit comfortably, but it would do until they made it to the inn. As they started on the road towards it, Jack turned around one last time, and saw the woman, looking up at the statue, her face fierce and perhaps, hopeful. He felt a hand on the back of his head, a gentle nudge of fingers and he hurriedly turned his head forward. He picked up the pace, feet shuffling to keep up with the long legs of his two companions. The hand dropped but the warmth lingered and Jack didn’t know what to make of that.

***

Kotetsu sat at the edge of the back porch of their room. The inn turned out to be located near the port, with the front of the inn facing the street, but the back faced the water so that the terrace really seemed more like a pier. He sat there, his feet dangling in the dark water. The sun had set entirely by now, the only illumination came from the moon, the stars and the small gaslamp hung from the ceiling. It was dark but Kotetsu had grown up in Oriental Town, with the neighbor’s house a kilometer away from his own. There had been street lights of course, but his backyard? The garden? It was just a pitch-black as the water was. 

Strange that he kept thinking about his childhood. Ever since they had appeared in this strange world, Azura, Stormhaven, he had been inundated with a strange sense of nostalgia. He wasn’t even sure why, none of these places were remotely like Oriental Town, other than being surrounded by nature. And yet there was such a profound longing inside of him.

He let out a breath, looked at the starry sky. 

If he were honest with himself, he would admit that the longing had started long before Azura. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? He was terrible at being honest, especially to himself. Had he always been like that, he wondered. Thinking back to being a kid, to being a teenager… it all felt so far away, a different lifetime. Running around in the fields behind his house, hiding in the tall grass, catching frogs and fireflies, bathing in the icy water of the creek. It felt like a dream as if someone else had lived that life as if he had taken those memories from a stranger. 

And perhaps one could argue that it was just the fact that it had been so long ago, that all children’s memories turn hazy in adulthood, but he felt that way about even recent stuff. Tomoe, she was also just a memory now when before she had been such a tangible ache between the ribs. Now that too was gone.

He looked down at his ring, he still wore it, couldn’t even imagine ever taking it off, but somehow, he didn’t feel the weight of it so much anymore. If he were honest, and Kotetsu smirked at that, he hadn’t felt the weight of it in quite some time, and still, he couldn’t decide if that meant that he had healed or if it was a betrayal of sorts. Were they mutually exclusive? Or could they exist at the same time? Two years he had been asking himself that question and he had yet to find an answer to it. 

He turned around when he heard the door creaking open and watched as Bunny looked around until he spotted him on the floor. Kotetsu lifted a hand in greeting and the other to his mouth, index finger extended to signal he should be silent. Barnaby carefully closed the door and walked towards him. He had bathed, as they all had, his hair was damp, the curls hanging loose over his shoulders, and he had forgone his jacket and bracers. His shirt was almost identical to the t-shirts he wore regularly, and the pants also looked like something Bunny would own, something frightfully fashionable and expensive. He’d slid on his boots but hadn’t tied the laces. 

“What are you doing out here?” Barnaby asked, sliding readily down to the floor next to Kotetsu and he smiled. They were so close their shoulders brushed and Kotetsu was thrilled by these moments of intimacy between them. They were so small, perhaps insignificant to others but to him…

“I wasn’t sleepy,” Kotetsu answered and looked at Bunny. He remembered how at the beginning Bunny couldn’t even be in the same room as him. And now… now they could sit side by side, close enough to feel each other’s heat, close enough that he could smell the faint floral scent of the soap they had been given at the inn.

“Hm, we should rest anyway, tomorrow we leave on a journey,” Barnaby said and Kotetsu grinned, he could hear the air-quotes around the word journey and for some reason, he found that terribly endearing.

“So, do you know what happens next?” Kotetsu asked, head back against the wooden wall, and watched as Barnaby stared out into the darkness of the ocean, his brow furled into a frown.

“I would like to tell you that the book was memorable but it’s a fairly straightforward story. There is travel, we will go from one place to the next, the hero, Jack in this case I suppose, learns valuable life lessons along the way, and then he defeats the evil sorcerer and saves the Kingdom.” Barnaby let out a deep sigh. “Perhaps I will remember more as we go along.”

“So you think we will have to do the whole story?” Kotetsu asked and was slightly dismayed. How long would they have to stay in this place? Barnaby was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again he did so slowly, carefully wording his thoughts.

“I think that this story means something important to Jack. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we are in a dream about this story specifically, maybe he picked it unconsciously, but I think…” Barnaby trailed off and raised his head to look at the stars. “When I was a kid, living at the orphanage, we would get runaways every now and then, kids who would run away from their homes or foster homes…. I hated those kids at the time, I couldn’t understand why you would leave your family willingly.”

“Not every family is a good family,” Kotetsu said and Barnaby looked at him, smiled gently.

“Yes, I learned that as I got older but when I was a kid, I couldn’t understand that your life would be so miserable that you would _choose_ to be alone. But I started to see the bruises and the broken bones and the blue eyes and then I started to see the fear.”

Kotetsu sighed. “You saw it too, huh?”

“He was terrified, running away in the street…. He is just a kid and he had chosen to run away rather than to spend one more moment wherever he had been.” That feeling was alien to Barnaby. For all his tragedy, he hadn’t feared any of his caregivers. The sisters at the orphanage had been strict, perhaps exceedingly so at times, but never mean, never vicious. He had never feared them, had never feared being hurt by any of them, and so that primal, self-defensive urge to flee and seek shelter elsewhere… he hadn’t experienced that as a child, but he had as an adult. After Maverick’s betrayal, he had first run away, and then, he had sought shelter, had found it not in a place but a man, and wasn’t that terrifying in and of itself?

Barnaby turned his head and came face to face with Kotetsu who had been looking at him. They sat there silently, the water of the ocean lapping gently at wood and stone that held the porch together, a rhythmic beat, swaying close and then far. There were crickets singing, nearby, sounds of town-life in the distance, people coming and going from a pub or from work, guards doing their rounds to keep the town safe and get the drunkards home, chainmail clinking softly with their steps.

It wasn’t quiet, not really, but as Barnaby looked at Kotetsu it felt like all of that didn’t matter, reality falling away piece by piece as they looked at each other with sleepy eyes on a porch. 

Kotetsu reached up almost absent-minded, took one of Bunny’s soft locks to curl it idly between his index finger. He was reminded of the moment just before everything had gone awry, of the two of them standing on the sidewalk and him pulling out the flower to hand it to Bunny. It had been impulsive, he hadn’t had a plan really on what to do with it, he had kept it just because he wanted to, but then he’d give it to Bunny and suddenly it wasn’t just a flower. The world had fallen away in that moment, it had been just him and Bunny and pink peony between them, and Bunny had looked at him with eyes like he was doing now, and just like then, Kotetsu didn’t know what to do either. 

Somehow without him noticing, they had become like the water, and ebb and flow, near and then far and yet never near enough or far enough, just somehow always teetering on the edge, trapped in an endless loop and Kotetsu didn’t know a way out of it. He released the lock of hair he’d been playing with and it signaled the end of the moment. The tension ebbed, retreated, and fizzled into nothing. 

Bunny looked away and Kotetsu felt a stab between his ribs.

“In any case,” Barnaby said and took a deep breath, “I think this story is meaningful to Jack, I think the picked this in a moment where he had been overwhelmed by fear, and unless we figure out a way of breaking out of this, I think we will have to live through it,” Barnaby continued, voice steady and soft, betraying nothing of what he felt or thought and Kotetsu looked away.

“That could take a long time,” he said at last.

“Yes,” Barnaby said simply but then reached out to curl his hand around Kotetsu’s and squeezed it briefly. Kotetsu looked at him. Barnaby was looking back at him, determined and fierce. “We’ll make it through, you’ll see,” he said and Kotetsu felt his heart beat hard against his ribs. There he went again, pulling through for the sake of the two of them and Kotetsu felt pathetic. Wasn’t he supposed to do that for Bunny?

He smiled, squeezed the hand tightly in return.

“You are right. We’ll make it through,” Kotetsu said and looked at him directly, “together,” he finished and Barnaby smiled, soft and private.

“Together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a burst of inspiration and look at that! It's 3 am again lol, but I'm all caught up now? How??
> 
> Ahhh... in my original plot outline chapter 9, 10 and 11 were entirely different. Bunny was supposed to fall ill and he would have hallucinations in chapter 10 and overcome the whole thing in chapter 11. It was supposed to be introspective for Bunny but it didn't really make sense for many reasons. We have seen mostly Bunny's pov so far, so I thought it was time to switch that. There are characters that need to be fleshed out and I'm terribly behind on all of that like, Jack?? Do you talk? Ah... this is hard.
> 
> I also changed it because I had this vague idea of giving them "trials" and just... I had created such a complicated system in my head and I just thought: do I need any of this?? What is the story I'm telling anyway??
> 
> I think this is partially why I fell into such a slump over the weekend, I just didn't know what I wanted to really say and well, the whole challenge is supposed to "prompt" me and help me out in telling a story, and not hindering me. So, I will keep my outline as a guide, there are, after all, very specific points I want to hit, but I won't make such a big fuss anymore when I unavoidably deviate away from them. I'll just see where this story takes me.


	11. Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 11: light

Jack was sitting out on the back porch, his feet dangling over the ledge as he looked over the ocean. It wasn’t quite light out yet, the sky grey and pink as the sun rose, but there the harbor was already busy. Sailors and dockers were already busy hustling on the ships and the dock, moving freight, shouting out orders. Seagulls flew by cawing as they dove into the water to fish for food, and the fish markets were getting ready for the first catch of the day.

He liked Stormhaven, everybody was always busy doing something here. The first time he had visited he’d been asleep for real, had been dreaming about Azura but halfway through he woke to remain in the dream and he’d had fun. Running around the city, playing with kids who weren’t afraid of him. It had never been night-time, that first time, it had been an endless morning and he’d remained so long in the dream that he was late for school that day. 

He’d wanted to bring his mom to Stormhaven. She liked the ocean, she just never had any time to go on vacation but this way, they could stay at home and go to the ocean anyway. He’d wanted to show his mom but when he’d told her about she hadn’t said anything and then Uncle Richard had told him to stop being a little kid and being such a problem. 

Jack took out the crystal ball from his pocket and held it in his hands. He had never done that part before. He’d always only come to play and run around along the dock and the beach and had played in the forest with other kids. He had never done anything else. This was supposed to be his safe place and now…

He turned around when the door opened and watched as Kotetsu stretched, arching his back until it popped and letting out a mighty yawn. When he finished he blinked a bit and then seemed to finally notice Jack.

“Oh, hi!” he greeted easily and sat down next to him so that both their feet dangled over water. “You are up early,” Kotetsu said and Jack shrugged. He didn’t know what to think of him, of Kotetsu. He was sort of weird and he talked all the time and he didn’t know what to do with that. Grown-ups never really talked to him unless it was to tell him how much a problem he was.

“I guess,” he answered, looking away. He didn’t want to talk to him, he never knew what he was supposed to say anyway. Every time he spoke he got into trouble and he never knew what he did wrong.

“Although did we really sleep?” Kotetsu wondered, scratching his side, “I mean, if we are already in a dream, then, can we sleep in a dream?”

Jack shrugged. It was a dream, everything is possible in a dream. “You can do anything you want in a dream,” Jack said out loud and kicked his legs. He hadn’t put on shoes, but his legs were too short to reach the water. He looked at Kotetsu’s legs. He was wearing his trousers but was also barefoot. The hem of his left leg had ridden up and the fabric was bunched halfway up his calf. His legs were so long that his toes dipped into the water below. 

“Huh, I guess you are right,” Kotetsu answered thoughtfully. “So, wait, does that mean we are asleep in real life too?”

Jack hunched over and Kotetsu narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, I guess,” he said but this time he sounded much more unsure, and Kotetsu knew that there was more to that statement. Jack didn’t want to talk about it, but he knew they were all asleep, that the same thing that had happened to mom had happened to them. And he didn’t know how to fix it, it wasn’t supposed to be that way.

“How long have you had your ability?” Kotetsu asked and Jack wanted to throw himself into the water, but what good would that do anyway? He would probably wake up and everyone else would still be asleep and then Uncle Richard would come to yell at him but he didn’t know how to fix anything. 

“I don’t know, a while,” Jack answered and raised his knees up to his chest, hiding his hands in his lap.

“I guess it’s probably harder to figure out with an ability like yours,” Kotetsu wondered, looking over the ocean, aware of how Jack had turned to look at him.

“You think?” Jack asked wearily. 

“Well, I mean, yeah! You probably were having these kinds of dreams before realizing that you were controlling them, that’s how it is with NEXT powers at first, you can’t really control. I used to break everything I touched, it was terrible. At first, my parents forbade me from using them, because I would break everything I touched. I even put a hole in the wall of our house once. And you know, at the time I really didn’t like my ability. I was really afraid of it,” Kotetsu confessed and he could still remember those moments so vividly, still remembered how he became shy during that time, too afraid to touch anybody or anything. He stopped playing with the other kids, with his brother. 

“But you are a hero,” Jack said, “your power saves people.”

Kotetsu smiled. “When I was ten and had just discovered my power, all I did was break things, hurt people. I even hurt my mom once,” Kotetsu confessed, the memory an old one, and even though he understands it was all an accident and nothing terrible had really happened, he would never be able to forget that he once hurt his own mother. “She was fine, she still is fine, scolding me every chance she has,” Kotetsu continued with a grin, “but yeah at the time, I thought my power was just destructive. And then I met Mr. Legend, do you know him?”

“Yeah, he is like a super old hero,” Jack said and Kotetsu turned to look at him.

“Super old- oi,” Kotetsu complained and elbowed Jack gently, “he is not _that_ old and he was super cool,” Kotetsu said and pretended to not see how Jack tried to hide a smile. “Anyway, I met Mr. Legend. I was with my mom at the bank when the place was suddenly being robbed and he came and saved us all, and he told me that I was meant to use my ability to save people.”

“That’s lame,” Jack said and Kotetsu gave him a sour look. Jack wasn’t looking at him but he was smiling a bit and so Kotetsu heaved out a terribly exaggerated sigh.

“Kids these days I swear, have no respect for their elders, I’m trying to tell you something here, kid,” Kotetsu said and poked Jack in the arm. “It’s not my ability that saves people, it’s me,” he said and looked at Jack seriously.

“An ability, a NEXT power, a skill, whatever, it just exists. It’s not good or bad, what matters is what we do with it. I was afraid because I didn’t know how to not hurt people, but then I learned how to use my power and control it, and then I got to help a lot of people with it.”

Jack stared at Kotetsu and felt something in his chest give way, like something heavy that he’d been carrying around had just fallen away. Maybe he could do that too. Maybe that’s what you were supposed to do. 

“How-” Jack started and looked away when Kotetsu turned to look at him. “How did you learn to control it?”

“By using them a lot,” Kotetsu answered. He was once again reminded of his childhood back in Oriental Town and he smiled. “I told you I grew up in a rural town, surrounded by nature and mountains. I would go pick up rocks. At first, I broke them all, I could never figure out how much strength to use. But I kept trying, every day, first with rocks and when I stopped breaking those I used other things, and then after a while, I understood how my body worked.”

Jack was quiet for a moment, he rolled the glass orb in his hands, scattering the light refracted in it. Could it be alright? Telling Kotetsu about his power. Surely he wouldn’t be upset, he was a hero and he had been afraid of his power too, so maybe he would understand. “I don’t know how my power works,” he admitted, giving Kotetsu a quick look. “Uhm, my mom… she doesn’t like it when I use it.”

“Hmm, my mom was the same. She was afraid I would hurt me or somebody else. I didn’t understand that back then, I just thought she was afraid of me like everyone else was,” Kotetsu said and Jack lowered his legs and leaned a bit closer.

“Y-yeah, I think, I think my mom… I think my mom doesn’t like my ability,” Jack said and sat back to not seem so loud, “Uncle Richard says I shouldn’t bother her all the time.”

Kotetsu made a face that Jack didn’t see, he had gone back to look at the little ball in his hands and Kotetsu took a deep breath to get his face under control.

“Listen, your mom is just trying to protect you, okay? When I was a kid, my mom was trying to do the same for me. Nobody else in our family had ever been a NEXT, I had been the first one and I had this super destructive power on top of it. She didn’t want me to get hurt and she tried to do what was right,” Kotetsu reached out to place his hand on Jack’s back. “I’m sure your mom is also just trying to protect you.”

Jack bit his lip, rolled the little ball nervously in his hand, and then said before he lost his nerve: “I don’t want her to be afraid.” He looked up at Kotetsu, worried what he might say but Kotetsu simply grinned at him widely.

“See! You are already halfway there! Wanting to do something, that’s the hardest part. You will see that you will master your ability in no time! You just gotta start little by little, but I think,” Kotetsu said looking out onto the water, the beautiful landscape that surrounded them, “I think you are pretty good at this already,” he said with a smile and Jack looked around too. He liked Azura, he had been to Stormhaven many times in his dreams. This was easy for him to do, to come to this place, so maybe, so maybe all he had to do is to keep dreaming.

“Hn,” Jack said with a nod and then blinked at Kotetsu’s fist in front of him.

“Good!” Kotetsu said and after a moment, Jack made his own fist to bump his. It felt a bit like they had made a deal. Maybe it was going to be okay.

They turned around when the door opened and watched as a still mostly asleep Bunny stepped into the sun. Barnaby squinted at them, looking bleary even though it wasn’t that early anymore. He stood there at the door and Kotetsu couldn’t stop the slow roll his heart did at Bunny’s sleep-tousled hair and disgruntled face.

“Bunny!” Kotetsu said with a grin. “You are awake!”

Barnaby blinked and grunted and then looked at Jack and gave him a grunt too. Jack leaned close to Kotetsu.

“What’s wrong with him?” he asked and Kotetsu laughed.

“He’s just a slow starter in the mornings,” Kotetsu said with a wink and got on his feet. “Come on sleepy head it’s time to wake up! Let's go wash your face and get dressed. Do you want breakfast?” 

Jack watched as Kotetsu led Barnaby back into the room, and heard his voice fade as he did. He looked back at the little crystal ball in his hand and thought that maybe he could be a hero too. He just had to keep practicing and then maybe he wouldn’t be afraid anymore, maybe he could be strong too. Suddenly he felt the little ball grow warm and he watched amazed as it filled with light that swirled within it. He scrambled to his feet, almost fell down in his haste, and ran after Kotetsu and Barnaby, the tiny ball clasped firmly in his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just realized I'm already a third way into the challenge... and things have yet to happen....orz.... Again, this is just me underestimating the scope of the story and the number of words I can realistically put out a day. Even though I had planned for this to be a 50K story (which I think it will be) I think that amount was never enough for this ridiculously massive thing I had come up with. I keep cutting things out every day but ahh... I guess that's a learning experience in and of itself.


	12. Meet. Cute.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 12: meet cute*

Kaede stepped into the hospital, her uncle right behind her, and went straight to the reception desk, but before she could even open her mouth she heard her name called.

“Kaede.” 

She turned to a side and watched Agnes and her ground-eating strides come close. “I’m Agnes Joubert, I’m the producer for Hero TV,” she says, introducing herself with a handshake. “I trust that Mr. Jackson has explained the situation to you?” 

“Yes-” Muramasa started only to get interrupted himself.

“Where is my father?” Kaede asked, stepping forward, clearly not willing to waste time in nonsense, something Agnes could relate to. 

"I'll take you to him, follow me," Agnes said, giving the nurse at the reception desk a quelling look, lest she decided to get in the way. They headed down the labyrinthian corridors in haste. 

"Ben said that they had been placed in quarantine, is it alright for us to get near?" Muramasa asked and Agnes nodded.

"They have recently been removed from quarantine, they are now in a regular room, it’s safe for you to enter. They had been previously isolated because Jack had been giving out… shocks, whenever anybody tried to touch him.”

“Shocks?” Muramasa asked slightly scandalized but Agnes waved him back.

“As I said, he has stopped now, it is perfectly safe now for you to approach him. Believe me, Mr. Kaburagi,” Agnes said as she stopped in front of a door, her hand on the handle, “I am ruthless, driven and ambitious, but even I draw the line at putting children in danger,” she said, tossing her hair over her shoulder and opening the door. Muramasa was oddly relieved by that.

Agnes stood to a side as Kaede and Muramasa entered the hospital room. It was just a regular room, a small one, with four beds, three of them were occupied. On one side was a kid who she assumed was Jack, on the other side Barnaby and her father. She stepped close to her dad, reached out to touch his hand. It was warm.

“They look like they are sleeping,” she said, there were no traces of pain, no tubes or breathing masks attached to him, just two electrodes to his forehead. Barnaby was in the same exact getup, they really just looked like he was deeply asleep. 

“For all intent and purposes, that’s exactly what they are doing,” Agnes said standing next to her, arms crossed. “We are monitoring their brain activity and I will get the doctor here so he can explain in more detail, but everything points to them being profoundly asleep and dreaming.”

“And the kid over there is the one doing this?” Muramasa asked and Agnes nodded.

“Yes, that’s Jack. We don’t know if he is doing it willingly or not, according to the statements we have recollected he seemed to be panicking at the time it all happened. Psychic abilities are incredibly powerful, and by all accounts, he his a new user, so he most likely hasn’t mastered his ability yet either.”

“Are they in danger? My dad and Barnaby?” Kaede asked and Agnes thought that one was supposed to be reassuring towards children, but she remembered clearly being a kid and knowing when the grown-ups had been lying to her and she thought that Kaede would know too. 

“The truth is, we don’t know,” she said bluntly and watched as Kaede’s glistened with tears before she took a very deep breath and blinked them away. She had spine and Agnes thought that Kotetsu really didn’t appreciate his own kid enough. “There is much we don’t know, we are still gathering information, we have a couple of leads that we can pull but our sources are not being particularly forthcoming at the moment,” Agnes continued, thinking about Wong who had flat-out refused to even acknowledge their inquiries. 

“The one thing we do know for sure is that we need to know more.”

They all turned towards the door at the new voice and Dr. Henson stepped in. 

“I’m Dr. Henson, I’m in charge of overseeing this case, I understand you are Mr. Kaburagi’s family?” he asked even as they shook hands.

“I’m his brother, Muramasa, and this is his daughter, Kaede.”

“Ah, yes, I’ve heard of you and your ability,” he said, sounding more intrigued than anything else and Kaede had little patience for that. 

“You,” she said, placing her fists on her hips. “What have you been doing to help my dad?”

“Ah… excuse me?” he asked, taken aback by the outburst.

“As far I can tell nobody has done anything to figure out how to help my dad or Barnaby or even Jack. and they have been here _for hours_.”

“Well yes, but-”

“PLUS!” Kaede continued talking over the stuttering Dr. Henson, “I also heard it’s your fault that they are like this in the first place!”

“Well now, that’s a bit-”

“Were you or were you not running after him in the middle of the street shouting at him?” she asked with an accusatory finger. 

“I mean, we were running after him but only because he had run away first!”

“Well don’t you think that you have done something really wrong when a kid runs away from you! That is just basic knowledge, even babies know that,” she finished crossing her arms. 

“Ah… I’m- I’m sorry?” Dr. Henson said, sounding confused as of why he was apologizing in the first place but Kaeded nodded satisfied.

“You should be. I’m going to help my dad, so tell me what we need to do in order to make that happen,” she finished and Agnes pursed her lips. She was around the same age Dragon Kid had been when she’d debuted, and Agnes had no doubt she would be a formidable hero. She put that idea in her back pocket for later. Season seven was coming up after all and it was always a good idea to keep things fresh.

Dr. Henson explained how they would proceed, which was in and on itself, nothing complicated. They would hook Kaede up to some electrodes herself and would have a medical team on standby but that was the extent of their preparations.

“This all seems a bit…” Muramasa trailed off at the number of unclear variables they were faced with.

“I understand and I agree,” Dr. Henson said, “we don’t know what will happen once Kaede uses her power. Maybe something, maybe nothing, maybe she will be able to copy to ability but won’t be able to do anything to Mr. Brooks or Mr. Kaburagi. The decision is entirely up to you,” Dr. Henson said looking at Muramasa.

“No, the decision is up to _me_ ,” Kaede said and her uncle gave her a stern look.

“I’m your legal guardian, so the decision _is_ up to me,” he said sternly and he was more and more inclined to be against it, but Kaede gave him an unimpressed look.

“Yes, but the last person I touched was my dad, so now I have 100 power and if I use it, it won’t matter that you disagree, _you won’t be able to stop me_ ,” she said and it was an empty threat, it really was, because if Uncle Muramasa really said no, she would listen, because he, unlike her Dad, knew what was best for her, and she would obey him and be rightfully furious at him for it. And the thing was that Muramasa understood that agreement, and had always respected her will to make her own decisions. 

They looked at each then, a conversation taking place in silence where Kaede’s face was determined and serious in the way a thirteen-year-old never should have to be and Muramasa cursed his own brother for always placing her in these impossible situations. She was mature for her age when she shouldn’t have had to be, she was fiercely independent but it had grown out of a desperate need to protect herself, and no matter how much Muramasa cared for her, he was not her father, nor had he ever pretended to be. She had shouldered the responsibility of her own well being but also for Kotetsu’s and she was doing it now again, stepping up to take care of him when it should have been the other way around. 

And yet he knew that standing in her way now would only foster resentment in the long run, and he thought that there were enough bad feelings all around, to add to them. 

“It’s up to you, Kaede,” Muramasa said and if his brother had problems with that decision, then he could sort them out with his daughter as a father should.

Kaede let out a deep breath and relaxed and turned towards Dr. Henson.

“I’m ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! This is four days late but I just spent the past three days having terrible migraines and sleepless nights as a result of my migraine medication, so I was just stuck in an endless loop of sleeplessness and caffeine-induced hyperawareness, plus the worse PMS I've had in a while so I was also incredibly emo and listless. Overall, a terrible combo. Plus it's been so fiendishly hot too....
> 
> Anyway, I'm better now! o/ So I'm back to my regular posting. idk if I will be catching up with the missing days or if I will just finish the challenge late *shrug* Taking it one day at the time!


	13. Toll

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 13: music

“What do you think it means?” Kotetsu asked Barnaby, looking at the light swirling inside the little crystal ball. Barnaby tapped his chin.

“This too is part of the story,” Barnaby said after a moment. He was still slightly squinty, and his hair was sort of all over the place. It was, by far, Kotetsu’s favorite look on him.

“Does this story have a name?” Kotetsu asked and Barnaby squinted but provided no answer.

“Journey to the lost Kingdom,” Jack answered then and Barnaby gave a nod agreeing to it, but remained silent. Jack didn’t elaborate and Kotetsu repressed a sigh.

“Alright, so what does the light mean?”

“The light is the power of the emblem, the more light there is in the orb, the more power it will have.”

“Right,” Kotetsu said with a nod because Barnaby sounded completely serious about something that was borderline senseless. “So how do we get more light into it?”

Barnaby blinked at him. “Ouhm,” he said and then continued to just squint at him some more but didn’t further elaborate. 

Kotetsu turned to Jack. “What happens in the story?” he asked and Jack rolled the ball in his hands.

“The hero goes to all the other Kingdoms and collects their power. And then he fights the evil sorcerer,” Jack explained and Kotetsu nodded along sagely.

“Right, of course, we’ll go to all the other-” he broke off and blinked. “Wait, to _all_ the Kingdoms? Isn’t that going to take months to do?” he asked, looking back at Barnaby who was finally getting close to being fully awake. 

“This is dream logic, so I don’t think it will actually take us months to go from one place to another.”

“Do we even know which way we have to go?” Kotetsu asked and Jack and Barnaby shared a look but didn’t provide any answers. Oh boy. “Okay, so I guess the first thing on the list for today is get some directions.”

“Agreed,” Barnaby said and took a deep breath, “we best get started in that case.”

Barnaby peeled off towards the wash basin to wash his face and finger combed his hair. Kotetsu and Jack finished dressing, sliding on jackets and boots and, in Jacks’ case, a satchel. 

“Ready?” Kotetsu asked and when, Barnaby and Jack nodded, opened the door, only to stop and stare. Barnaby stepped forward to stand next to him.

“Well, I guess this answers your question on how we are going to get where we need to go,” Barnaby said, standing next to him. In front of them instead of the now familiar cobblestoned roads of Stormhaven and the busy streets of the port city, was a narrow winding path leading up a mountain. 

Kotetsu took a step forward and turned around. Sure enough, the door was still there and Bunny and Jack were still standing in the room they shared at the inn, but everything else was gone. The door looked almost like a portal that had opened in the middle of the road. 

“This is really weird,” Kotetsu said and Barnaby stepped out of the room too, followed by Jack. The door closed behind him and vanished. Kotetsu blinked. Dream logic. Right.

“Well, which way do we have to go? Up or down?” Kotetsu asked.

“Up,” Barnaby answered with certainty, looking into the distance.

“How can you be sure?”

Barnaby had turned to the left and was pointing up with a finger. Kotetsu followed his line of sight and then tilted his head further up. There in the sky, floating amidst the clouds, was something that looked like a castle on an enormous, rocky crag. 

“That’s the Sky Fortress of the Kingdom of Wind,” Jack explained and when Kotetsu looked at him added: “it’s where we are supposed to go first.”

“Of course,” Kotetsu agreed and looked back up, wondering how the hell they were supposed to get up onto something that was _floating in the sky_. Dream logic, he reminded himself and took a deep breath.

“Up we go then,” he said with as much cheer as he could muster and both Barnaby and Jack started walking ahead. Kotetsu smiled and followed. He watched them walking side by side as they made their way to the top of the mountain, with Jack sneaking glances at Barnaby and trying to keep up with his rhythm, his much shorter legs moving faster to keep the pace. 

Barnaby’s hair blew with the soft breeze, his long legs eating up the ground easily, effortlessly moving forward. Kotetsu smiled. That was Bunny alright, moving forward relentlessly, determined, and focused. Once he had set his eyes on a goal, he pushed forward, come what may, and he was both infuriatingly and admirably stubborn. They were so different in that aspect. Not in the stubbornness, heaven knows that Kotetsu could be just as hard-headed. 

But the drive… that was something else entirely. Bunny who had let his grief and anger fuel his revenge for years had forged those feelings into a resolve of steel. That focus, single-mindedness, and commitment…

Kotetsu thumbed his ring. Commitment… that wasn’t really something he’d had. The only thing he had ever been determined was to be a hero or well… He cocked his head to a side. That wasn’t exactly right, was it? He thought back to when he was ten, afraid of everything, of touching anybody, of getting close to anybody. It wasn’t that he had wanted to be a hero as much as he had wanted to stop being afraid, had wanted for others to not be afraid of him either. 

He thought about the conversation he’d had with Jack just a little while ago. It was true, he’d gotten better, had learned to use his ability, had _mastered_ it even and he had never been afraid to hurt anybody else with it again. 

But that wasn’t the only way one could hurt people, was it?

Kotetsu thumbed his ring and watched Barnaby walk in front of him. There were all kinds of pains, all sorts of ways one could hurt another. 

When he was ten, he’d wanted to stop being afraid, he’d wanted for others to stop being afraid of him, but most of all, he’d wanted to stop feeling so lonely. 

Kotetsu let out a deep breath and looked up at the sky. It had been three decades since he’d been ten and yet it turned out that after all that time, after everything he had gone through, somewhere deep inside he was still that scared boy after all. _Ah Tomoe, your husband is kind of an idiot,_ he thought.

He really was hopeless after all. 

“Kotetsu?” 

He blinked and looked at Barnaby who had stopped, waiting for him to catch up, and by the look in on his face, Barnaby had probably called his name more than once.

“Ah, sorry, daydreaming,” Kotetsu explained with a grin and Barnaby arched his brows.

“A pun? Really?” he said, dry as a desert and it took Kotetsu a moment to figure out what he was referring to before he laughed.

“Not on purpose, I promise,” he reassured and they both continued up the path, catching up to Jack who had reached the summit. The wind picked up at the very top, blowing strong enough for Kotetsu to squint so his eyes wouldn’t dry up. They were now exactly under the massive crag floating up high in the sky and he could see now the giant rock formation was anchored to the ground by four, thick, iron chains as if to prevent it from flying away with the wind. From their current position, he couldn’t see much of the castle, just three huge, white turrets that extended up so high they tips were lost in the clouds. 

“Now what?” Kotetsu shouted but before either Jack or Bunny could answer, they became aware that there was something else they could hear other than the wind. Something that sounded like bells ringing in the distance. Kotetsu looked around, trying to discern where the noise could be coming from and then looked up. The sound of the bells increased, the melody clearer by each toll. He looked at Barnaby who was looking back at him.

“Bells?” Barnaby asked, clearly just as confused as he was about that development, and then they were abruptly engulfed by a beam, an incandescent blue light enveloped them all, and Kotetsu reached out instinctively to pull Barnaby and Jack close to him as his gaze turned whited and his body reverberated with the sound of the bells.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should stop promising things lol. 
> 
> This week has been... strange. It's really been a while since I've had such a bad PMS week (migraines every day, what gives yoooooo) and the headaches just drain me so damn much. Even the few days where I was feeling fine, I had a hard time mustering up the focus on working on this. 
> 
> Since last year, I have given myself the task of writing at least 1K words a day, and ever since May from this year, I have not broken that streak. I didn't this week either, I wrote a lot, but I had a hard time organizing my thoughts and moving this story forward. I have 5 half-written chapters because I kept moving the parts back and forth since I couldn't make up my mind on what I wanted to actually happen in the story. 
> 
> I think I'm having such a hard time with this, not only because I am so not used to writing this kind of story, but also because I keep trying to force things to happen in a specific way. I keep trying to come back to theme and plot-outline and the thing is that in the middle of writing, I keep coming up with other things I like so much more.
> 
> I think that moving forward I will stop trying to force myself to into a direction I have no interest to pursue. because that's the main reason why I had such a hard time picking up this story because it has started to feel like a chore and it really really shouldn't.
> 
> I do want to finish by the 31st since I have already other projects lined up for September and I don't want to fall behind on those! So I will probably update more than one chapter a day (but no promises haha)


	14. transmogrification

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 14: metamorphosis

Getting ready for a psychic deep-dive was apparently not as straightforward as Kaede had thought it would be. There were reams of paperwork for Uncle Muramasa to sign, and tests that had to be performed and apparently an endless amount of phone calls and Kaede didn’t know much about adults, but in her experience, they spent more time talking about doing things than actually doing them. And if it had been up to her, she would have just skipped all the paper and the calls and the tests, but uncle Muramasa had insisted and Kaede understood a compromise when it was shoved so clearly under her nose.

So she sat for the tests, got her blood drawn and heart rate checked out and electrodes hooked to her head and it all took _forever_. The scary reporter lady had left at some point (on her phone, of course) and Ben had arrived in her stead. He and uncle Muramasa were busy talking and going over papers while Dr. Henson shone a light in her eyes. She didn’t even get what the whole point of it was anyway if she fell asleep just like her Dad and Barnaby had, it’s not like they would have any clue on what to do about it, that was the whole point of her doing this in the first place.

Adults were really silly. 

Dr. Henson clicked off his penlight and Kaede blinked the white spots away. “It seems you are in excellent health,” he said as he filled out yet another form.

“I know,” Kaede replied because of course, she was, she told them so. Dr. Henson smiled but then put away his pen and set aside the clipboard.

“We are ready,” he said towards Ben and uncle Muramasa and both men stepped closer. He turned back to Kaede. “We will monitor you just the way we are doing with the others, to make sure you are okay.”

“Okay,” she said and moved towards Jack’s bed. 

“What exactly are we expecting to happen?” Ben asked and Dr. Henson turned towards him.

“Miss Kaburagi will copy Jack’s ability by touching him and then activate it, which will allow us to hopefully study it, by getting her direct feedback. As far as we have gathered so far thanks to Miss Joubert’s, ah, intel, she should remain awake even while using the ability. So in theory, she could walk us through how it works, and after that, we could determine if there is a way we can induce wakefulness in the other patients,” Dr. Henson explained, while Kaede stood next to Jack’s bed, watching him. 

He was the same age she was, and he didn’t look like anything special, he just looked like another kid. He had brown hair and his skin was a bit darker than hers and that was all she could tell. Scary reporter lady had told her a bit about him, things she’d found out from his classmates and teachers. That he was sort of shy and quiet. That he would rather read or doodle than pay attention in class. She’d never understood what the problem was about doodling in class. Teachers complained so much about it that it was obvious that every kid was doodling and they were doing just fine weren’t they?

She turned around when she noticed uncle Muramasa leaning down to talk to her.

“If you have changed your mind, you can still say no, Kaede,” he said softly. Kaede bit her lip. She knew that her uncle was just trying to help her and the truth was that she was a bit nervous. She’d used some psychic abilities in the past, but nothing really like this. There were all sorts of NEXT powers, many of them, _most_ of them were silly or useless. She once picked up an ability that made her sweat on command, what was the point of that? That had been awful and she’d been stuck with that power for a whole week. 

She turned to look back at Jack. But this was not one of those silly powers, she could control minds with it, she could _hurt_ minds with it. She looked back at her dad. He didn’t look in pain. None of them did, but they also couldn’t wake up, and at some point, that could be bad and she knew that her Dad and Barnaby both would jump in to save her if she were in trouble. They had done so already because they were heroes and that’s what heroes did. And she was her mother’s daughter and the daughter of Wild Tiger, so she would obviously do what had to be done. 

She looked back at uncle Muramasa and nodded. “I’m ready,” she said and he took a deep breath but smiled. He placed his big, warm hand on her head, something he didn’t do often and she was secretly glad he did.

“Alright then, do your thing,” he said and stepped away. Kaede looked at Dr. Henson one more time just in case he had come up with something else that needed to be done, but he just nodded. So she reached out and placed her hand on his before stepping back. She closed her eyes, searched for that strange NEXT feeling, that thing that felt like a pressure in her chest and tingling under her skin and then activated it and-

She opened her eyes. 

She was still in the hospital, uncle Muramasa, Ben, and Dr. Henson were all looking at her. Nothing at all seemed different. Dr. Henson turned to watch the monitors with a frown, the machines beeped steadily. Muramasa stepped forward.

“Kaede?” he asked and she frowned.

“Eh? It didn’t work?” she wondered out loud. She turned back to Jack and without thinking reached out to him again and only noticed that her hand was glowing blue when it closed over Jack’s. And then suddenly it was as if she’d been thrown into a pool, a rush of sound, an overwhelming sensation of being _pulled_ into something and the last thing she heard was her uncle yelling her name. 

She was asleep before Muramasa caught her in his arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dun dun! It's a baby chapter but really there was nothing else to add and this fic already has like a million words and I'm not even halfway through omg.


	15. King of Heaven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 15: coffee shop

Barnaby blinked his eyes open and tried to gather his bearings. He was lying down on something warm. He moved his head, saw Kotetsu’s trademark kitty beard so close to him that he could barely get it into focus. 

He was lying on Kotetsu. 

He was lying on top of Kotetsu who had his arm wound tightly around his waist.

Barnaby lowered his head back onto Kotetsu’s chest, gave himself three seconds to enjoy the closeness before leveraging himself up to his knees. His movement jarred Kotetsu into action, who grimaced and then groaned. By the time he opened his eyes, Barnaby was already getting to his feet. Jack was lying on Kotetsu’s other side, nestled under Kotetsu’s arm as well and Barnaby couldn’t help the unbearable fondness that spread through him. He tapped Kotetsu’s knee with the tip of his boot.

“Wake up, old man,” he said and it sounded fond even to his ears, but Kotetsu gave a grunt and sat up. 

“What happened? Where are we? You okay?” Kotetsu asked, patting Jack on the back to rouse him. The kid made a face but also sat up.

“I’m okay,” he said and looked around with awe. Barnaby understood, he was awed as well.

“This is not the summit,” Kotetsu said after a moment of silently looking around.

“No,” Barnaby agreed. “I think we are above the summit,” he said. They were lying on a stone circle surrounded by columns, in a wide-open space, and from there they could see the majestic, white and blue castle that spread out in front of them. Or rather, all around them, since it was clear that they had landed somewhere in the middle of the fortress. 

The terrain was uneven, so the fortress spread out over a series of terraces, and in the middle were the three massive turrets they had seen all the way from the ground. They were even bigger than they had first thought, huge white columns stretching up into the sky, ending up in cone-shaped, blue-tiled rooftops. They were littered with windows and staircases that ran outside of the towers, leading from one window to the next, spiraling up and down the entire length of it. Barnaby wondered how anybody would be able to move there since the wind was already strong where they were standing, and they were on the lowest terrace. 

In front of the castle, and all around it apparently, there were other buildings, smaller houses, and settlements, the terraces connected through ramps and staircases. And though the beauty of the place was undeniable, it was also quite apparent that it had recently gone through battle. There were signs of destruction all over the place, broken down buildings, torn greenery, scorch marks. 

“There was a fight here,” Kotetsu remarked and Barnaby nodded. 

“But they are rebuilding already,” he answered and pointed towards the closest terrace, filled with activity as people moved around. Kotetsu smiled and then narrowed his eyes.

“Don’t they look… a bit weird to you?” he asked but before Barnaby could answer, his attention was caught by something that was coming their way, or rather, _flying_ their way.

“Kotetsu-” Barnaby started, looking up pointedly but Kotetsu had already noticed them. They looked like humans in every way, with the exception of their massive wings, propelling them forward at great speed. And they just weren’t any people, they were wearing armor and carrying weapons.

“Soldiers,” Jack said out loud and Kotetsu pulled him back.

“Stay behind me,” he said, pushing him in between himself and Barnaby and Jack hunched his shoulders. He looked up at them, their backs seemed so high up from him, covered everything so he couldn’t see the soldiers anymore. Why did this always happen? Why did they always make him hide? How was he supposed to get better if he could never do anything?

He looked up at the sound of wings flapping and watched as the soldiers circled them. A group landing, another group holding guard up high. The ones on the ground had their spears out ready while the rest who remained in the sky were pointing at them with bows and arrows. From in between Kotetsu’s and Barnaby’s elbows, Jack could see one of the soldiers break formation. His armor was more elaborate, and when he spoke, his voice carried command. 

“Strangers,” he said, “what do you seek here!” 

“Ah-” Kotetsu started, looking at Barnaby, “funny you should ask-” he stammered out and Jack thought about what Kotetsu had told him earlier that morning, that wanting something was half the battle. And he wanted something, he wanted to not hide anymore, he wanted to be better, to be more, he wanted to not be afraid anymore. Before he knew what he was doing, Jacked had shouldered his way through Barnaby and Kotetsu.

“I am the Hero of the Lost Kingdom,” Jack said, almost screaming it in his nerves, and he felt his heartbeat hard in his chest. He felt a hand land on his shoulder, Tiger’s, and even though he pulled him back a step, he didn’t push him behind them. He stared at the soldier that had spoken, the captain perhaps, and hoped that nobody noticed that he was shaking. 

The captain looked at him. He was a tall man, with dark skin and even darker eyes, his helmet was shiny silver that glinted in the sunlight and matched the armor he was wearing.

“What proof have you of this claim, boy?” The captain asked, after a moment, not threateningly, but firmly, and Jack reached into his satchel to pull out the small orb. It still had a tiny speck of light flickering and this time even the captain seemed to be taken by surprise. His eyes widened for a moment before he got the expression under control again and he nodded at Jack.

“We will take you to our King,” he said and then turned around. He issued out orders to the unit still in the air, which peeled off and flew off. “Come,” the captain said and then headed out of the stone circle, down a ramp. Kotetsu gave him a gentle push and Jack unglued his feet from the ground and stumbled forward. They walked in silence, Jack clutched the tiny orb tightly, afraid that if he tried to put it away he would drop and lose it. They walked down and up ramps, climbed staircases, crossed bridges, surrounded by a group of soldiers, and Jack thought it was just like it had been in Stormhaven. Except this time they didn’t stop at a temple but rather what looked like an ordinary house, a shop by the look of the sign that still hung next to the door, the drawing of a steaming cup still clearly visible. The roof had collapsed, it had been badly damaged, but people were moving in and out of the wreckage in a clear effort to salvage and reconstruct. 

“Wait here,” the captain ordered and then flew up into the sky. Looking up Jack noticed that there were more people there as well, carrying and moving debris in groups. The captain went to one of the men currently holding onto a big beam, who, after a brief conversation, was replaced by another man, and then followed the captain down.

When he was close, Jack could see he had blond hair, blue eyes, and a kind smile.

“It is as the Goddess foretold,” he said, his voice full of charisma, “the hero has arrived at last! Welcome and welcome again!” he said and Barnaby and Kotetsu shared a look.

“That’s-” Kotetsu started and Barnaby clamped a hand around his arm and pulled him back, away from Jack..

“Yes, that’s him,” Barnaby said softly.

“Ah! But, he looks like Keith,” Kotetsu whispered urgently. 

“Yes, Jack can’t be imagining this, it has to be one of us,” Barnaby confirmed under his breath-.

“Bunny, this is bad, we are blowing his secret identity,” Kotetsu continued and Barnaby squeezed his arm. Honestly, this man, worrying about the most irrelevant of things.

“It’s fine,” Barnaby reassured under his breath, “Jack doesn’t need to know that this image of Keith is the real Sky High, he might even think he’s the one coming up with him. I mean, he has imagined every other person we have met so far, hasn’t he?” Barnaby reassured and Kotetsu blinked.

“Right, you are right,” Kotetsu said, feeling intensely relieved.

“Your majesty,” Barnaby said out loud stepping forward while Kotetsu made a face behind.

“Ah! You must be the hero’s entourage!” Keith, the King, said and Barnaby nodded and, for lack of anything better, bowed. He elbowed Kotetsu until he did too. “You are all most welcome. It is a shame that you have come at a time where much of it has been destroyed but alas if it weren’t for that, I imagine you wouldn’t have come in the first place, you are, after all, the foretold hero, the savior of Azura.” 

“Yes,” Jack said and Keith, the King, gave a nod.

“Come, then, there is much we need to discuss,” he said and then touched Jack’s forehead with a finger and then promptly disappeared in a beam of light, leaving Barnaby and Kotetsu sputtering behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOD THIS PROMPT!! This one was hard because in my original outline there was supposed to be an actual coffee shop but well you guys already know what happened to my original outline, it's on fire in a trashcan. orz
> 
> Anyway, this is a bit of a cop-out, but all AU's will be because this already IS an AU of sorts, so they are drinking warm beverages, lets all be grateful for that lol.
> 
> Also King of Heaven - KoH get it? GET IT?


	16. Praeteritum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 16: history

Jack blinked the brightness away. He felt unsteady on his feet but this time he didn’t fall and when he could finally see again, he noticed that the King must have brought him (teleported him?) to the castle. They were in a wide, circular room, one side opened up to a balcony. The King slowly walked towards it, hands clasped behind his back, under his big, white wings, and Jack followed.

“Now,” the King said, “what is it that you seek?” he asked and Jack frowned.

“I have come seeking the power of the Kingdom of the Wind,” Jack answered and Keith inclined his head.

“Yes, young hero, that is why you are here, but which power is it that you are seeking to obtain?”

Jack blinked confused. What was that supposed to mean? In the book, in the story, all the hero did was get to the Sky Fortress and talk to the King, and the power would be granted to him. How was he supposed to know which power he was supposed to get? He looked at the ball he still held clutched in his hand.

“I don’t understand,” he said, at last, feeling unbearably small. He wished Tiger and Barnaby were there, they would surely know what to say, what to do at this moment. They were real heroes, they would have all the answers. Instead, all he had was himself, and he… he had never been enough for anybody in his life. “I don’t know which power I seek.”

“And yet, you already gained some of it,” the King said, pointing at the orb in his hand, the light within swirled. “So you must know how to obtain the power you seek.”

“I-” Jack bit his lip, “I don’t know… how I got this… to be honest,” he answered meekly. He knew it, he was no good after all. He wanted to leave, he wanted to not be here anymore, he couldn’t even be a hero in his own head, how pathetic was that?

He was brought out of his revelry by a hand on his shoulder. When he looked up, the King was standing in front of him, smiling benevolently, his eyes almost completely closed.

“Embracing ignorance is the fastest way to acquire knowledge, young hero!” he said with incredible cheer and Jack didn’t know what to think about that. “However, the fact that you have clearly acquired one power already means, that in some way, you already have the knowledge. You just don’t know that you know it yet.”

Jack stared at him, even more confused than before, but the King seemed to be waiting for an answer, so he nodded. “Right,” he agreed and the King patted his shoulder a couple of times before letting it go.

“What you hold in your hands right now, is the Emblem of my Kingdom, the Kingdom of the Wind. It’s the Emblem of Spirit,” the King explained and Jack nodded. As much he knew, had been explained to him in Stormhaven.

“But it’s empty,” Jack said. “It was just a crystal ball.”

“Of course it is, for power can not be given, young hero,” the King explained, “it can only be gained.”

“How do I do that?”

“The very first step is knowing what you want to obtain in the first place.”

Jack turned the orb in his hand and thought back to the early morning and his talk with Kotetsu. It had been so simple then, so obvious at that moment but now… Jack stared at the orb. Wasn’t it obvious still? Could it really be that simple as just _saying_ what he wanted? He bit his lip and looked up. 

“I-” he started and trailed off. The King stood patiently, watched him as Jack struggled with himself until finally deciding that he might as well just what he wanted, even if it was dumb. “I don’t want to be afraid anymore,” he said, his voice shaking and feeling thick in his throat and when the King smiled, he felt he could finally breathe. 

“And what, young hero, is it that you fear?” he asked and 

“What if… what if I’m not good enough?” he asked, feeling small, sounding small, and he wished he could just go to a corner and disappear. 

“Good enough for what?” the King asked and Jack frowned.

“Just- just good enough,” he repeated and the King let out a thoughtful ‘hmm’.

“That is quite a conundrum, young hero. For one, you must first determine what ‘enough’ means.”

“What do you mean?” Jack asked confused and the King turned to look at him.

“Well, you said ‘good enough’ not just ‘good’, so the first thing you must determine is what ‘enough’ means to you.”

“I-” Jack trailed off. He didn't know the answer to that. He didn’t know how to measure that, he just knew that he wasn’t good enough because everyone kept telling him so. At school, at home, and even here, now. 

The King watched him for a moment before he stepped close to the railing, clasping his hands behind his back.

“I wonder too, sometimes, what ‘good enough’ means,” he said after a moment. His affable face turning somber as he watched over his Kingdom.

“My Kingdom, my Sky Fortress ‘Heaven’s Vault’, has been attacked, over half of it destroyed, nothing but rubble and ruins,” he said mournfully and Jack tentatively stepped closer to look over the railing as well. From this point of view, high above but right in the center of it all, he could see that the King was right. Entire quarters had been lost, scorch-marks were everywhere, and it was clear that the battle had been very one-sided.

“We lost this battle,” the King continued and he looked up, at the dozens of people flying back and forth, aiding in the reconstruction, helping each other out. “And yet I have no doubt that every single fighter out there, gave their best. I have no doubt that they fought to protect all our citizens, that they gave it their all.”

“But you still lost,” Jack said quietly and the King turned to him and smiled.

“Yes, young hero, we did. We gave all we had to give, and we still failed. That is a lesson we must always remember. We don’t have any certainty that our actions will bring us the success we seek.”

“Then why even try?” Jack asked and the light in the orb flickered at the vehemence in his voice. 

“It is precisely because we don’t know what will happen that we must act,” he said and Jack looked at him confused and the King smiled at him. “Uncertainty means that anything can happen. Something bad or something good. We fought because there was the possibility of success. But if we hadn’t fought at all… we would have lost for certain,” the King turned to him then, serious and determined, “failure is only guaranteed if we decide not to act,” he said and Jack’s eyes widened. The King stepped forward and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“All we can ever do is our best effort. All we can ever do in any circumstance is to act to the best of our capabilities, whatever those capabilities might be at that moment. Sometimes we can not beat the odds, sometimes we will lose a battle, but as long as we keep learning, as long as we keep trying, we don’t have to lose the war,” the King said and then just like that, Jack felt the ball in his warm grow warm and when he looked at it, saw it glow brightly. 

“It looks like, you have found what you were seeking after all,” the King said benevolently and Jack continued looking at the ball.

“I still don’t understand…” he said, still sounding unsure.

“Young hero, every journey begins the same way.”

“How?”

The King looked out over his Kingdom, smiled and said: "With one step forward."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally this was part of Chapter 15 but it made for such a fricking beefy chapter I ended up splitting it up in two. I'm trying to keep a somewhat consistent wordcount (trying being the operative word here....)


	17. Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 17: cooking

“What- what just happened?” Kotetsu asked and Barnaby whirled around towards the captain of the guards.

“Where did they go?” he asked imperviously and the captain managed to express his displeasure at being addressed so crassly, without moving a single muscle in his face.

“The King has taken the hero to the castle,” he said and lifted a hand to stop Barnaby’s next question. “I will take you there as well, so you may wait for him there. Please follow me,” he said in a way that was neither a request nor polite, and then turned around and walked away without waiting for an answer. 

“Please come with me, I will take you to the castle where you can wait for the hero,” the Captain said and proceeded to walk. Kotetsu and Barnaby shared a look but followed the Captain anyway, it wasn’t as if they really had any choice in the matter. Kotetsu rubbed his forehead.

“Are you okay?” Barnaby asked and Kotetsu sighed.

“I’m just tired,” he said and realized it was true. He was feeling tired and he felt a headache coming on and thinking about how that made no sense because this was a dream, made the headache worse. And then he felt the reassuring pressure of Barnaby’s fingers digging into the back of his neck. Kotetsu lowered his head and let out a satisfied groan. He didn’t need to look at his partner to know that Barnaby was smiling, but Kotetsu didn’t mind because Barnaby was excellent at that. They continued walking, with Kotetsu looking mostly at the floor while Barnaby pressed and rubbed and massaged the tense tendons in his neck.

Kotetsu wondered when he had gotten so used to Bunny’s touch when it had stopped being awkward and had become familiar. They had known each other for years now, had saved each other’s lives countless times, had seen each other at their worst and the best. And at some point, between the long work hours, the stress and the joy of being a hero, the quiet times they spent at each other’s apartments, at some point they had stopped being strangers and become...something else.

Barnaby’s hand dropped away, his fingers trailing down Kotetsu’s back as he did. This too was familiar, these touches, the caresses, so careless and frequent that Kotetsu didn’t notice them anymore. 

He looked at Bunny from the corner of his eye. He’d been so reserved at first, an Ice Prince, untouchable, unapproachable, and something about that had bothered Kotetsu from the very beginning. Bunny had carried himself clad in bulletproof armor and Kotetsu had wanted to shatter it, for no other reason than to see what he’d find inside. 

Kotetsu looked at the floor again, kicked a pebble out of the way as they continued their path up and down slopes and staircases, winding their way through the terraces, each step taking them closer to the terrace.

Looking back, Kotetsu thought he’d been cruel back then, picking on someone else because his own wounds had been too raw. And yet, somehow, miraculously, what he’d found underneath the prickling exterior and the armor, had been something soft and gentle and achingly familiar. That beyond all the pain and fear and the hurt, there had been something growing there, a seed budding, waiting for the rain and the sun and Kotetsu had seized it with both hands and by pulling Bunny out of the darkness, he’d rescued himself.

Kotetsu let out a sigh and smiled. Ah, he really was an idiot after all. 

“What are you thinking about,” Barnaby asked and Kotetsu blinked at him, brought out of his reverie. That moment was years ago now, he wasn’t there anymore, neither was Barnaby, and he wondered how he could articulate all of that.

“I was just remembering the first time you made fried rice for me,” he said after a moment and grinned when Barnaby looked away embarrassed.

“Why must you always bring that up,” he asked and ran a hand through his hair, exasperated. Kotetsu laughed.

“Why wouldn’t I? It’s one of my favorite memories!” he answered honestly and Barnaby gave him a frustrated look.

“I almost set my kitchen on fire and it tasted _awful_ ,” Barnaby said woefully because it had been a disaster of a night. He remembered the evening as well, just clearly not at all fondly as Kotetsu did. It hadn’t happened right after the fight with Maverick, but rather after the year they had spent apart. Officially it had been to celebrate Barnaby’s reinstatement at Apollon media in the second league. Unofficially it had been to celebrate that they were together once again. 

He’d been nervous, Barnaby remembered. Even though he had practiced, even though he was the superior cook of the two of them, he’d been nervous because the entire evening had felt so strangely important, had been so charged with meaning. And the fact that Kotetsu had come over early, had stood in the kitchen while Barnaby prepared the meal, had made everything so much tenser. He’d been so distracted and so out of practice, he’d started a small grease fire and if it hadn’t been for Kotetsu’s quick thinking, it would clearly have gotten out of control. Even so, the fire alarm started beeping, the rice got burned, the kitchen was a mess of spilled food and smoke and Kotetsu couldn’t stop laughing even while Barnaby climbed on the counter to wave away the smoke.

He’d felt embarrassed, humiliated, standing barefoot on his own kitchen counter with a damp towel in his hand, and his clothes splashed with food. 

“I admit, the fire was unexpected and the rice really did get awfully burned and smokey,” Kotetsu said and Barnaby covered his face with his hands, “but, you know, that’s not really the part I think about.”

“It isn’t?” Barnaby asked dubiously and Kotetsu smiled. 

“No, what I think about when I look back at that night, is what happened after all that,” Kotetsu continued, “it’s how we cooked together afterward, side by side in the messy kitchen, and we made omelets with what we had leftovers and we ate them with wine that was way too fancy for eggs.” Kotetsu turned to look at him. “That’s the part I think about,” he added quietly and Barnaby had to look away because he could feel himself getting flushed. 

Barnaby remembered that moment too, how they’d stood barefoot in the kitchen, cracking eggs and whipping them together with the leftover chopped vegetables. They hadn’t talked, had simply stood side by side working seamlessly, the only sounds were the noises of a knife gliding over crisp vegetables and the sizzling of the pan. 

And Barnaby remembered too what he’d thought at the time, that he’d felt like he had finally come home. 

Barnaby looked at Kotetsu, reached out with a hand, feeling the need to say something, to acknowledge this thing that lay unspoken between them.

“Kotetsu I-”

“We are here,” the Captain interrupted them and both Barnaby and Kotetsu startled. They had completely forgotten where they were, had been absorbed in the memories and the yearning, and had lost sight of the fact that for all intent and purposes, they were still asleep. 

Barnaby dropped his hand, this was not the time nor the place and turned to focus on the looming building in front of them. The castle that had seemed so far away was now right in front of them. They were at the foot of one of the towers, a massive wooden door led them into a corridor and they both blinked at the abrupt change of lighting. After a few more steps, they entered what clearly was the main room and saw Jack standing there in the middle. He immediately ran towards them when he spotted them.

“Jack,” Kotetsu said and kneeled down, taking hold of his arms, “you alright?” he asked and Jack nodded. 

“Yes, I-” he started, and instead of explaining what happened, pulled out the orb from his satchel. Kotetsu blinked at it. It was shining brighter than before. Kotetsu looked at Barnaby first and then at Jack. 

“Does that mean you got the power from Kei- err, the King?” Kotetsu asked, standing back up and Jack nodded.

“He did indeed.”

They all turned around to see King Keith walk towards them, arms outstretched up to the heaven in the classing King of Heroes pose. “Young hero has gathered all he can from the Kingdom of the Wind and now he must continue on his journey.”

“What exactly is your power?” Barnaby asked and King Keith smiled.

“It is spirit, of course!” he said and Barnaby and Kotetsu shared a look.

“Er, spirit?”

“Yes! Each emblem embodies the best of each Kingdom which is why the Kingdom of the Wind was granted with the power of Spirit: Hope for the future and the faith in oneself to achieve that which one aspires to,” King Keith said, closing his hand over the orb.

“Right,” Barnaby said and frowned thoughtfully, and then blinked when he felt King Keith’s hand on his shoulder.

“It is time for you to continue,” he said and smiled, and even as Barnaby opened his mouth to answer there was the sound of bells again, one deafening toll and just like before they were engulfed in blinding blue light. Barnaby reached out blindly to Kotetsu, felt his hand clasp his own and then everything fell away again.


	18. Fata Morgana

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 18: myths

The first thing Kotetsu became aware of was the heat. The second thing he became aware of was that he was lying on some sort of pebble and it was digging right into his kidney. With a groan he rolled onto his side and pushed himself up on his elbow. He blinked and blearily until his eyes could focus once more and then grimaced. 

It was instantly clear that they were no longer in the Sky Fortress. Gone were the cerulean skies filled with the thick white clouds and the elegant, the white turrets of the Heaven's Vault. They were no longer flying in the sky, they were firmly on the ground, surrounded by endless dunes of golden sand. The sun was setting, bathing the landscape in red and there was not a single soul as far as the eye could see.

He crawled his way towards Barnaby who was lying face down just a few steps away from him. He reached out and gently shook his shoulder.

"Wake up sleepyhead," Kotetsu said and continued to look around and grimaced. "Come on, Bunny," Kotetsus crooned and brushed Barnaby's hair away from his forehead. Barnaby frowned, his fingers twitching in the sand, and then he too opened his eyes. He blinked a few times before pushing himself up to his knees.

"Ow," he said eloquently but sat back on his heels and looked around. "Well," he said and then stopped. Kotetsu snorted and got up to his feet, sinking and sliding in the soft sand as he did. He windmilled his arms a bit until he recovered his balance.

"We are in a desert," Barnaby said, using his excellent detective skills to state the facts. Kotetsu offered his hand and helped Barnaby onto his feet.

"That's not the only thing," Kotetsu said as they both wobbled and slid down the dune.

"What's the other thing?" Barnaby asked and looked around.

"Jack isn't here," Kotetsu answered and Barnaby stopped. If circumstances had been different, it would have been almost comical the way that Barnaby went from slightly disgruntled and sleepy, to fully awake in about two seconds. He stood up straight and looked around. There were no places to hide.

"There are no places to hide," Kotetsu said out loud, "just sand everywhere. He isn't here."

"So either he wandered off or he didn't travel with us." 

Kotetsu gave up on trying to get the sand off of him. It was all inside his clothes now, he could feel it. "I think the latter," he said and gestured to the ground. "I think we would have found footprints or something, there is no wind blowing. Besides, I didn't grab him this time around when we got beamed."

"Me neither," Barnaby said, knowing for certain only that he had reached out for Kotetsu. "This is not ideal," he said at last, placing his hands on his hips.

"That's one way of putting things," Kotetsu answered and they both looked at each other. "We can't stay here," Kotetsu said and Barnaby agreed.

"The sun is setting and it will soon be unbearable cold. We have to walk, the question is where to." 

"Give me a lift," Kotetsu said stepping back and Barnaby readied his hands, interlocking his fingers and lowering his hips, bending his knees. Kotetsu gave a running start, as much as the sand allowed him to, and then activated his hundred power to launch himself up with the help of Barnaby, springboarding off of his hands. He gained enough eight to clear the dunes and then turned to look frantically around. He was almost grappled by despair until in the last moment he glimpsed a look, the sun reflecting off of something in the distance in the opposite direction from where the sun was setting. 

He landed with an 'oof' and would have fallen on his ass if Barnaby hadn't reached out last minute to grab his arms and pull him forward. They stumbled clumsily, bodies colliding but managed to remain standing.

"We must head west," Kotetsu said. "There is something there."

"By something you mean..." Barnaby trailed off dubiously and Kotetsu made a face.

"I mean something that reflected the setting sun," Kotetsu said and then the last of his one minute power faded away. "We can start walking and then later check again using your powers if you want," he said mulishly and Barnaby rolled his eyes.

"There is no need to sulk, old man," Barnaby said and began walking heading west. They would have to walk around the big dune first, it was impossible to climb it without sliding all over the place.

"And now you are calling me 'old man' again," Kotetsu grumbled, "I thought we were past that," he said almost pouting and Barnaby had to try very hard to not smile.

"Well, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck..." Barnaby trailed off but his lips twitched up anyway.

"Yeah yeah, let's hurry, it did look far away and I don't know if we will have convenient powers now that Jack isn't here," Kotetsu said and Barnaby nodded. "Do you remember anything else from the story? Do you know where we are?"

"We are in the Fire Kingdom," Barnaby answered and looked up into the sky. "I don't remember the details of it, but I do know that the Kingdom is a citadel in the middle of the desert, I think it's called the Citadel of Eternal Flame, or something like that. This is the second kingdom and after that, there are two more that we will have to visit. Or rather Jack, I supposed."

Kotetsu sighed. "I'm getting tired of this, I feel I've been living here for years," Kotets sighed and Barnaby sympathized. He didn't feel tired exactly, it was... a strange sensation, he couldn't quite explain it. He took stock of his body. He felt fine in that regard, felt he had the energy to fight and when he focused on the peculiar sensation that his NEXT power gave him, he could feel that too, ready to activate when he chose to. But he also felt like he'd just had a really long day of doing paperwork. He let out a deep breath. There was nothing they could do about any of that right now. They needed Jack and right now especially, they needed to find him.

"Do you think..." Barnaby broke off and waited until Kotetsu looked at him, "do you think that Jack is okay?" he asked and Kotetsu waved a hand carelessly.

"I think he is doing just fine," he answered dismissively and Barnaby gave him an annoyed look.

"We don't even know where he is, he could have landed somewhere else in the desert."

"Even if he did he'd be fine," Kotetsu answered, lifted a hand to twirl his index finger. "He knows the story the best out of all of us, and he is clearly familiar with walking around in this world. Plus, he has great control over his NEXT power, so I'm sure he'd be able to get himself out of any trouble easily."

Kotetsu's optimism and his ability to look at the silver lining in every dark cloud were one of Barnaby's favorite things about Kotetsu. Today, it was proving to be one of his most annoying traits. 

"If Jack could control his abilities the way you claim, we wouldn't be here in the first place," Barnaby answered and Kotetsu rolled his eyes.

"I said he could control his ability, not his feelings. If we haven't woken up it's because he doesn't want us to," Kotetsu argued in what Barnaby recognized as his 'this is obvious, Bunny, can't you see?' voice, and it just served to further infuriate hi,

"We don't actually know that Kotetsu," Barnaby answered and he started to feel the same anxiety he'd felt when they had first woke up in Azura. "We don't actually know how Jack's powers really work still."

"Well, we know this is a dream..."

"And that's about it!" Barnaby said getting agitated and took a deep breath to reign himself back. "We know it's a dream, we know he has... some amount of control over it. We know that some of our own consciousness bleeds through this because of Agnes and Keith. We are connected but I don't know if we are necessarily able to manipulate any of it."

"Hmmm," Kotetsu answered, staring up at the sky with a frown and stopped walking.

"What are you doing?" Barnaby asked and stopped as well. 

"How long do you think we've been walking?" he asked and Barnaby gave him a bewildered look.

"I don't know. Fifteen, twenty minutes?"

"Yeah, I thought so too."

"What does that have to do with what we were talking about?" Barnaby asked confused and rubbed his forehead with his forefinger. 

"The sun hasn't set," Kotetsu answered and pointed up at the sky. Barnaby followed and looked up. The sky was the exact same color as it had been since they had started walking, orange and red, not a single cloud as far as the eye could see. He turned around and looked at the sun. It was still at the exact same position it had been, dying sun rays over the horizon, it hadn't moved one bit.

"What do you think does this mean?" Barnaby asked.

"How the hell should I know? You are the smart one," Kotetsu sputtered and Barnaby tapped his lip with his index finger. 

"Let's try something out," Barnaby said and stepped closer. He reached for Kotetsu's hands and clasped them firmly in his.

"Bunny- what-"

"Shhh," Barnaby said, "close your eyes and be quiet for a moment," he said softly and waited until Kotetsu obeyed until he too closed his eyes. He searched for his childhood memory, stepped easily over the ache that never quite went away when he thought of his parents, and focused on the story, the fragments that still remained. He couldn't remember any descriptions from the book, but he could remember what he _imagined_ whenever he heard the story. Remembered a wondrous place of stone, a magnificent wall with statues at the entrance, and inside a grand palace of stone and glass that shone bright like fire in the dying sun. He took a deep breath and then there was a peculiar sensation, something similar to the bottom of his stomach dropping, like when riding on a rollercoaster and then the sensation of wind around them. 

He opened his eyes and then stared. 

"Bunny?" Kotetsu asked, squeezing his hands, and his eyes still firmly closed.

"Look," Barnaby said and Kotetsu opened his eyes and then turned around and gaped.

"Bunny..." Kotetsu trailed off, turned fully, and released one of Barnaby's hands and Bunny smiled, the ache between his ribs bittersweet and watched the massive gates with the giant statues in front of them.

"The Citadel of Eternal Flame," Barnaby said. 

They were still holding hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Catching up, catching up, catching up.


	19. Phoenix

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 19: deaging

Jack opened his eyes. He stared confused at the ceiling that greeted him, a wide dome, decorated with a mosaic of tiny ceramic pieces in colors of red and yellow and oranges, that all together formed a beautiful, intrinsic pattern. There were large pieces of fabric hanging from one column to the next, something translucent and light enough to move in the breeze. He turned his head to a side. There was an enormous window, no glass, just an opening in the stone wall that formed a peak at the top. The wind was blowing gentle and warm through it.

He sat up and noticed he'd been laying on something that looked a bit like a giant pillow. Soft and comfortable and fresh and he was surrounded by them, all of them in different shades and hues. He looked around the room, a small, circular space that had different spots designed for comfortable rest. The heap of pillows he was on, a long curved bench under the windows opposite from him, a small almost living-room-like space with two chairs and a table. 

It was very clear he no longer was in Sky Fortress. 

"Ah, it wakes."

Jack turned around towards the voice and watched as a man stepped in from the archway that connected the two rooms together. He was tall and the first thought Jack had was that he looked _regal_. Dressed head to toe in gold and red tunics, some sheer, some not, so that his skin shone through it in patches, and when the sunlight hit the golden tunic, his dark skin glittered and sparkled like diamonds. He was wearing golden sandals, his wrists and arms were adorned with gold as well, and when he was close enough, Jack could see his eyelids were painted gold as well. 

The man moved quietly, elegantly, the clothes swaying with the breeze and his steps, and all the different shades of red and gold and orange made it look as if he were covered in dancing flames. He stopped in front of Jack who climbed onto his feet clumsily. 

"Are you the King of Fire?" Jack asked and the man seemed amused by his question.

"I am indeed the ruler of these lands. And you must be the Hero of the Lost Kingdom." 

Jack blinked surprised. "How do you know?" he asked and then watched as the King lifted a glass orb, light flickering within. Jack quickly reached out to his satchel. It was empty.

"Fret not, child, I will give it back," the King said and moved to one of the benches to sit down slowly on it. Jack had the distinct sensation that if the King had had long hair, he'd tossed it over a shoulder. "Now tell me, how is it that you came to be in my chambers," he asked, still amused and Jack frowned.

"I- the King of Heavens sent me here," he said because the last thing he remembered was the King touching his forehead and then being engulfed in the same blinding blue light. 

"Ah, that would most certainly explain it, he has no sense of decorum," the King said, mournfully and leaned back on a hand as he held up the orb with the other. He watched as the sunlight glinted off of the crystal. "I see you have gathered the Emblem of Spirit already."

"Yes."

"So now you must be after the Emblem of Fire."

"Yes," Jack repeated and clasped his hands. For some reason, he felt he was sitting in the principal's office and he was feeling vaguely guilty even though he had no idea why that would be.

“What is it then what you seek?” the King asked and Jack was once again reminded of the conversation he’d had with the King of Heavens while standing on a balcony. He looked out of the window, the sun was setting and it was red and molten and looked like a ball of flame ready to consume the world itself.

“I don’t want to be afraid anymore,” Jack said because it was the one thing he was certain of. 

“Afraid of what?” the King asked and Jack looked down at the orb in his hands. He was afraid of everything, of failing, of hurting people, of hurting his mom… He squeezed his eyes shut, it was too late for that anyway. 

“I don’t know,” he said at last and the King gave out a sigh.

“That is most unfortunate,” the King said and Jack looked over and saw that for all the elegance and poise, the King seemed, well, ill.

“Are you alright?” Jack asked and the King looked at him again with the slightly amused smile playing around his lips.

“In a manner of speaking,” he said and then he was interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming from the archway. Shortly after a guard appeared who stopped and saluted.

“My King,” he spoke in a deep baritone. The King sat up straight again, a hand smoothing over his tunic so the fabric glimmered.

“What is it?”

“We have found two men who claim to be the companions of the Hero of the Lost Kingdom," the guard said and then glanced at Jack.

“Friends of yours?” the King asked arching a brow and Jack nodded effusively. 

“Yes, we, I guess we got separated when the King of Heavens transported us here,” he said and the King inclined his head.

“Very well,” he turned to the guard, “bring them here," he ordered shortly and the guard seemed to hesitate. 

“My King, the sun has almost set,” he said and the King smiled.

“I know, you must make haste then,” he said and the guard bowed and left, trotting down the corridor.

“What happens when the sun sets?” Jack asked.

“I will die,” the King answered and Jack startled.

“What?”

The King inclined his head to a side. “In a way, it is the closest way to describe it, I suppose.”

"What does that mean?"

The King stood up and carefully walked to one of the large windows. "You know that this world once held magic, yes?" Jack nodded. "Well, then you also know that the Goddess banished all the magic so that we could have peace. And so magic disappeared from the world entirely."

"Yes, now no one can do magic anymore."

The King looked over his shoulder coyly. "Well, that is mostly true. Most of the magic is gone, but it remains, here and there."

"It does?"

"Of course, you were at the Sky Fortress, were you not?"

"Well yes-"

"It's a piece of rock that is floating up in the sky," the King said drily and Jack closed his mouth. Well, when put it that way...

"Yes, it is."

"It floats thanks to the ancient magic that still remains in the world. All Kingdoms have some of it left, it just manifests in uniquely different ways. The Citadel of Eternal Flame is no different. There is magic here too, although a great deal of it was depleted in our battle against the sorcerer.”

“Is… is it gone then? The power of the emblem of fire?”

The King laughed, melodic and deep. “No, not at all. The power of the emblem is not magical, young hero, it is an ever-renewing force that lives beyond magic. No, the magic of the Citadel of Eternal Flame is different entirely, you see, we are the source of life.”

“Isn’t fire destructive?”

“Fire is light, is warmth, is energy. Where there is light, there is life. There is warmth, there is life. We are the fuel of the world,” the King said, raising and opening his arms wide and he was bathed in red light with the sun setting behind his back. “We are the eternal force of the Universe.”

“But… you said you were dying?” Jack asked and the King looked at him.

“Of course I am, everything that lives must be able to die, otherwise it can not be alive.”

Jack nodded utterly confused. “Right.”

The King smiled and went back to sit down next to him. “Young hero, eternity doesn’t mean that something never ends, everything must end, but that does not mean it can not begin once more. Sometimes, things need to end before you can continue moving forward.”

“Oh,” Jack replied and cocked his head to a side. “Is that what is going to happen to you?”

The King nodded. “Yes, in a way.”

They both looked towards the archway as they heard the sound of footsteps coming closer.

“I believe your friends are here,” the King said, standing up and looking towards the window, the sun was almost completely gone. “Just in time, I would say,” the King added and then turned towards the new guests.

Kotetsu and Barnaby looked winded but readily stepped forward towards Jack when they spotted him.

“Jack, you okay?” Kotetsu asked and then looked at the King, and did a double-take.

“I’m fine,” Jack answered and watched as Kotetsu and Barnaby exchanged a look. They did that a lot, he’d noticed.

“Right, good, right,” Kotetsu said, patting his shoulder twice and then just keeping his hand there. 

“The King of the Citadel of Eternal Flame, I presume,” Barnaby said, stepping closer to the King and then bowing formally, something the King seemed to find extremely charming.

“Oh my, these are some handsome friends you have,” the King said towards Jack and then let out a sigh. “Shame I won’t get to enjoy their company as much as I would have liked.”

“Are you leaving?” Kotetsu asked and the King smiled.

“In a way, yes. I’m afraid my time has come, young hero,” the King said stepping close to Jack.

“Aren’t you afraid of dying?” Jack asked and the King kneeled down, closing his large, warm hands over Jack’s and the orb.

“There is always a bit of fear when letting go,” the King said with a smile. “However the key to courage does not lie in the absence of fear, but in acting even when afraid.”

The King stood up and stepped towards the window, the sun was only a red line in the horizon and as night set in behind him, the King seemed to glow with light. 

“Young hero, if scared is the only way you know how to do something, then do it scared, as long as you keep moving forward, everything will be alright,” the King said and then the orb in Jacks’ hands lit up once more, light swirling within. And then all three of them watched as the King grew incandescent, as he lifted up in the air, turned and twisted and the tunics of gold and red turned into real flames, burning in golden and sparkling fired, consuming the man and leaving behind a golden, glowing bird, with feathers out of fire.

"A Phoenix," Barnaby murmured and they watched as it flapped its wings majestically, picking up air and sparks. 

"How incredibly dramatic," Kotetsu answered, sounding positively delighted by it all and then the Phoenix let out a screech that sounded just like bells and Barnaby knew even before they were engulfed by the light, that they would be teleported once more.

He felt righteous as he passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This prompt was kicking my ass so bad but then I had a FUCKING GALAXY BRAIN MOMENT AT 2 AM AND LITERALLY CRAWLED OUT OF BED TO WRITE THIS. Rebirth and deaging is like the same thing... right? Right.
> 
> Also, I broke 30K words.
> 
> *pops champagne* 
> 
> When will Kaede come lol.


	20. Depleted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 20: loss

Kotetsu squeezed his eyes shut. He was very tired of passing out and waking up on hard surfaces. He was now also, feeling very cold and apparently having hallucinations because he kept hearing his name called. He groaned and then frowned. No, not his name but rather-

“Dad? Dad?!”

Kotetsu opened his eyes abruptly and then came face to face Kaede who seemed to be kneeling next to him, her hands clutching his shirt frantically.

"Kaede?" he asked and her lip wobbled.

“Dad?” she asked, her worried face quivered once before firming into an angry moue. She slammed her tiny fist right into his solar plexus, making him forcefully expel all of his air.

"I was so worried!" she said angrily and Kotetsu rolled to his side and grabbed Kaede's hand just in case she decided to repeat her attack.

"Kaede is it really you?" he wheezed, pushing himself up into a sitting position.

"Of course I am, who else would I be?" she asked, frowning and Kotetsu took a good look at her. She looked like Kaede alright, her clothes slightly different just like Barnaby's and Kotetsu's were. Linen trousers instead of jeans, boots instead of sneakers, a loose cotton blouse instead of a t-shirt. Kotetsu rubbed his chest absentmindedly and narrowed his eyes.

"How did you get here?" he asked instead. She wasn't the first familiar face they had encountered so far, but neither Agnes, Keith nor Nathan had seemed to be anything other than the characters they had portrayed.

Kaede sighed and stood up, patting down her trousers. "I used Jack's NEXT power. Sort of," she said and Kotetsu stared at her some more and then felt himself grow teary. He reached out and pulled her into his lap, embracing her tightly.

"Oh it really is you Kaede!" he exclaimed, elated and terrified all at once. 

"What-"

Kotetsu turned around even as Kaede pushed herself out of his arms, and watched as Barnaby pushed himself up to his knees, rubbing his forehead and looking at Kaede completely confused.

"Kaede?" he asked with a frown and she nodded. 

"Yes, it's really me, I came to save you," she said smiling and blushing and Barnaby smiled back.

"I think you will have to explain that a bit more," he said as he stood and looked around. “Jack is missing again,” Barnaby said and Kotetsu who was also getting on his feet could see that too. It was immediately apparent that they had once again moved locations. Gone were the sultry sands of the desert surrounding the Citadel of Eternal Flame, and in its stead, they were surrounded by heaps of fluffy, crystalline snow. They were standing on a path that led them straight to a forest, and further ahead they could see the towering structure of a palace that glittered in the moonlight. White and blue, sparkling like glass.

"I'm guessing this is the Kingdome of Ice," Kotetsu said drily and Barnab gave him a hopelessly charmed look.

"Your powers of detection seem to be improving by the minute," Barnab replied but even he could hear the warmth in his voice. "Regardless, I imagine Jack is probably at the Ice Palace already, so we should try and make our way there."

"Ice Palace? Ice Kingdom?" Kaede asked and Barnaby and Kotetsu exchanged a look.

"Let's walk and we'll explain everything, it's cold so we should keep moving," Barnaby answered and shrugged out of his jacket to place it over Kaede's shoulders. She looked steadfastly at the floor while her cheeks grew hot.

"Thank you, Barnaby," she said and tried to sound as composed as she possibly could and Barnaby smiled.

"Come on then, let's go," Kotetsu said, placed a hand behind her back and Barnaby noticed that for the first time he was looking fatigued and tense. "Kaede, how did you get here?" He asked, in the calm tone that Barnaby knew he only used when he was feeling particularly overwhelmed.

"I told you, I used Jack's powers," she said, sliding her arms into the sleeves of the Jacket. It was too big but it was also blissfully warm.

"So you know how they work?" Barnaby asked and Kaede looked away.

"I... I don't know," she said and Barnaby watched as Kotetsu took a deep breath, ready for some ill-advised although well-intentioned fatherly remark and Barnaby reached out to him, grabbing his elbow firmly to stop him. 

"Tell us how you got here then," Barnaby asked instead and Kotetsu gave him an unreadable look but kept quiet. Kaede proceeded to tell them in as much detail as she could, about how they had gotten the call a couple of hours ago, how she'd traveled to Sternbuild with uncle Muramasa and how she'd copied Jack's powers. 

"And then things were weird. I mean, I had the power and I activated it," she said frowning, "but I don't think it worked? Or maybe I had to do something else in order for it to work, I don't know. All I know is that when I touched Jack, I just... everything went sort of dark for a little bit and when I woke up I was here in the snowing, and you two were lying next to me."

"Can you still use the power?" Barnaby asked and Kaede looked at him and then stopped walking. She closed her eyes, focusing on that strange NEXT feeling tingling under her skin and then activated the power, and then she opened her eyes.

"Oh no," she said and Kotetsu was immediately in front of her.

"Hey what's wrong."

"This is not Jacks' power," Kaede said and looked between the two of them. "This is your power, Dad," she said dismayed and Kotetsu suppressed a sigh. He placed a hand on her head and pulled her close.

"It's alright," he said tightly, his face grim and Barnaby knew that whatever calm Kotetsu had found before, it was eroding quickly.

"I guess I copied it when I touched you earlier?" she wondered out loud and Barnaby and Kotetsu shared a look. 

"Dream logic," Kotetsu said and Barnaby nodded.

"Dream logic," Barnaby answered and Kaede looked up at him.

"But, if this is Jack's dream then wouldn't he have to know about my ability in the first place?" Kaede wondered and Kotetsu sighed.

"Do you want to explain it?" he asked Barnaby, who nodded and proceeded to explain their experience so far in the dream. Starting with their awakening the day before outside of Stormhaven, their trip to the Sky Fortress, and the Citadel of Eternal Flame. They had begun walking again, clearing the forest and reaching a massive stone bridge that spanned over the chasm towards the castle.

"We don't fully understand how it works either," Barnaby confessed. "It seems that our consciousness is in some way connected. We have seen the other heroes show up as characters here, even though their identities are secret so Jack has no way of knowing them. But we've encountered Sky High and Fire Emblem so far, as well as Agnes. I wouldn't be surprised if we find Karina next," Barnaby said, tilting his head towards the castle. Now that they were closer they could see that it wasn't made so much out of stone as it was made out of ice.

"You are probably right," Kotetsu agreed. "We have... a little bit of ability to control the dream," he said nodding towards Barnaby. "We can't wake up, or really change anything, but-"

"It's like a videogame," Barnaby said and Kotetsu frowned, but Barnaby continued talking to Kaede. "Videogames have their own set of rules, their own logic, right?" he asked and Kaede nodded. "So this is similar, it has it's own rules and it's own logic, we are bound to the limits of the laws that rule the dream. We can't wake up, but we can travel to the place we see right in front of us. If we believe it can happen, then we can make it happen," Barnaby explained and Kaede looked at the castle thoughtfully.

"So I copied Daddy's ability because that's what I believe would happen in the real world?"

"Probably, yes," Barnaby said with a nod. "It probably also explains the difference we are experiencing with time. This is the second night we'll be here, but in the real life it's only been hours since we... fell asleep," Barnaby added and Kaede nodded to confirm.

Barnaby looked over at Kotetsu who was quiet, who had been walking along with them silently lost in thought and Barnaby felt weary. He wanted to reach out to him, to comfort him, to tell him that everything would be alright. But he didn't actually have any certainty of that. He took a deep breath and continued talking to Kaede, keeping her engaged as they crossed the bridge towards the castle, and allowing Kotetsu the moment he needed to process whatever he was feeling himself.

However, it had become brutally apparent that they were running out of time.


	21. Eternal Winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 21: family

Kotetsu clenched his fists and crossed the rest of the bridge silently, watching Kaede who was walking a few steps ahead of him, as she shivered in the cold. She was talking animatedly to Barnaby, who kept looking back at him with a worried face that he didn't even bother to hide. Kotetsu took a deep breath, focused on the castle ahead and made a conscious effort of relaxing his hands. 

Kaede shouldn't be here. Kaede should have stayed at home and waited. She shouldn't have gone to Sternbild and she sure as hell shouldn't have gone to the hospital. What had Masamune been thinking? And Ben? And Agnes for that matter? All of them had lost their minds allowing _a kid_ to experiment with a NEXT who had such a dangerous and strange power. 

He felt fingers brush against his hand and he blinked. He looked at Bunny who was giving him the look that Kotetsu had learned meant "are you okay?". He took another breath and noticed he had made a fist again. He shook his hands and slid them in his pockets and looked forward again. He couldn't answer Barnaby's questions because no, he was not okay, but if he started saying anything about it, it would all just end up in a fight and-

"Is it always this alone?" Kaede asked and Kotetsu blinked, pulled out of his thoughts entirely by her question.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, don't castles usually have guards?" Kaede asked and Kotetsu looked around. She was right, it was eerily desolate, different from every other place they had been so far, which had been filled with people and activity. This palace on the other hand had been entirely devoid of any of that. 

"Now that you say that, it is kind of weird," Kotetsu said looking at Barnaby as they reached the end of the bridge and stood now face to face with the palace. The castle loomed high in front of them and unlike the Citadel of Eternal Flame and the Sky Fortress, the palace was not surrounded by any walls, nor did it seem to boast any sort of city. It truly was just one magnificent, tall castle, icy turrets reaching towards the sky, surrounded not by a mote but by an abyss so deep it was impossible to see what lay beneath. There was nothing but mist and darkness and the faint sounds of water rushing in the distance. 

"What do we do now?" Kaede asked and Kotetsu and Barnaby exchanged a look again. Barnaby shrugged and then walked towards the massive closed doors and pushed. After a moment, it gave way and it opened a smidge. Barnaby turned around to call for Kotetsu to help him out but he was already stepping up next to him.

"On the count of three," Kotetsu said and Barnaby nodded, and then both leaned in and pushed against the door with all their strength. It moved with a groan, swinging open inch by inch as they both used their bodies and every bit of strength they had to push it open. They stopped when they had moved it enough for them to be able to squeeze through it, and the door settled with a groan that echoed in the chamber behind it.

"Stay close," Kotetsu said to Kaede, making sure she would stay behind him, and let Barnaby take the lead. They slid in between the opened door and entered the grand foyer. It was dark, the moon hidden behind clouds so that the entire room was cast in shadows. Somehow, it was even colder inside of the castle, and Kotetsu rubbed his own arms even as his breath puffed out in misty clouds.

"Hello?" He said, raising his voice just slightly but the sound bounced back off the high arched ceiling, echoing back and forth which only seemed to make it even more apparent that the place was entirely empty. Barnaby looked around feeling unnerved. The place looked to be abandoned, but he had this peculiar sensation of not being alone. They walked towards the two massive staircases in the center. Both of them curving and meeting at the top, the steps were white, visible even in the dark and the banister seemed to be made out of glass. The three of them walked slowly towards the center of the room, footsteps echoing in the preternatural silence. 

"Is there really nobody here?" Kaede asked, softening her voice midway through the sentence and hunching at the echo.

"It seems like it. We should explore anyway," Barnaby said, walking towards the staircase and then promptly stumbling over something on the floor. 

"You okay, Bunny?" Kotetsu asked, walking towards him and squinting at the floor. 

"Yeah, I'm fine," Bunny answered and got to his feet. Kotetsu had knelt down and reached out with his hands towards the vaguely dark shape on the floor. He fumbled for a moment and then his hand made contact with it and it pretty much felt like a piece of ice. 

"Can you see what it is?" Barnaby asked and Kotetsu shook his head.

"It feels like ice," he said even as he slid his hands over the irregular, bumpy shape. Kaede knelt down next to Kotetsu and just as she did, the clouds parted, allowing for the full moon light to come through the window, illuminating the hallThey could see clearly now, with the full moon shining through the windows, that the shapes they had previously mistaken as columns and statues were neither. They were people.

Kaede gasped.

"They are frozen!" she said, recoiling and Kotetsu reached out to embrace her. She was right, he had touched them and it had indeed felt like a block of ice under his hand, and now he could see them covered in ice, which shimmered blue in the pale moonlight. 

“What happened here?” Barnaby wondered out loud and then they all turned towards the staircase at the sounds of footsteps. Instinctively Kotetsu pushed Kaede behind him. Instinctively, Barnaby stepped up next to his partner so they stood side by side, ready for a battle, and only relaxed when they saw Jack emerge from the shadows.

“Jack?”

“The Queen-” Jack started and then broke off to swallow. “The Queen, is dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well look at that. It is I, the frenchiest fry. With an update!
> 
> Due to a lot of convoluted things that happened this month, I ended up not being able to write and then I decided that instead of feeling anxious and stressed about it, I would see it as a holiday. Please rest assured I have all intention of finishing this fic, I don't want to create a new WIP jeez. I will continue with daily updates until I finish the missing 10 prompts. 
> 
> In retrospect I am glad for the break since it allowed for the story to simmer in my brain and I managed to overcome some blocks I was struggling with previously. 
> 
> Thanks to all who have commented and stuck around! I will get around to your comments too ♥


	22. Fairytale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 22: pet shop au

It looked like a crystal ball.

That was the first thing that Kaede thought when the four of them stepped into the Queen's chambers. It was a large, circular room, all the walls were made out of glass which showcased the truly breathtaking view outside. On one side the steep grey, snow-tipped mountains, the stone shining in endless hues of glittery rock. On the other side, a white forest of evergreen trees spread out as wide as the eye could see, like a white, glittery ocean. And up high, a full moon bathed everything in cold light. The room was sparse in furniture, cushioned benches adorned one side of the room, places for rest and to enjoy the view, and on the other side were tables, places for work. And right in the center, on a sunken floor, was a wide bed, as round as the rest of the room, drapes hung from the ceiling and were artfully arranged around the bed. Heavy, satiny fabrics in shades of blue and white and silver, so long and heavy they pooled on the floor around the head of the bed, so it looked like water spilling from the roof. And even though all of this looked like a fairytale already, it was also snowing. Looking upwards, it didn't seem that the snow was coming from outside, but rather from the inside. Exactly like a snowball. The snow was thickest around the bed and the canopy, soft mounds of cloudy snow surrounded the bed, gathered in the edges of the windows. The chambers were freezing cold much more than the rest of the castle had been. It was deathly quiet. 

Kaede peeked from behind her father, her hand clutching his shirt in an unconscious effort to seek comfort. Even though they had all stopped at the entrance of the room, they were close enough to see the Queen in the middle of the bed, and she gasped.

"Dad, that's-" she started and Kotetsu placed a hand on her back.

"Yes, it is," he simply said, grimly but didn't move from where he was standing. Instead, he glanced at Barnaby. He gave a nod and stepped closer to the bed, his feet compacting the snow was the only noise in the room. Barnaby brushed one of the drapes to a side, snow sliding down to the floor as he did. He leaned over to better look at the Queen. There amongst the heavy covers, laid out on a mountain of pillows, was Karina in her Blue Rose makeup. Icy blue lips, crystals shining on her earlobes, blue hair spilling over the pillows. The contrast of the midnight-blue fabric of her pillows, and the pale light illuminating the room, gave her skin an almost unnatural pallor. She was wearing armor, white metal over her torso and shoulders, shaped not to flatter but for protection, even if it was beautifully, elegantly adorned. It was the armor of royalty, with precious sapphires embedded in the metal. Where there was no armor, there was fabric. She was wearing gloves all the way up to her elbows, and boots all the way to her knees. There was no patch of skin visible on her arms or legs. Her eyes were closed, one hand on her abdomen, the other on the bed. She looked like she was asleep. Barnaby reached out and touched her cheek with the tips of fingers. She felt icy cold.

"Bunny," Kotetsu asked but Barnaby ignored him, moved his fingers to press under her jaw, and frowned. He leaned over closer, his ear almost pressed against Karina's mouth.

"Bunny?" Kotetsu asked again, this time moving to step closer but Barnaby was already standing up again and had turned around to face them.

"She is breathing," he said, the surprise in his voice evident even to himself, and his words propelled them all forward, Kotetsu moving to the other side of the bed so they weren't all crowded together. Kaede joined her father, feeling still uneasy, and Jack stopped somewhere at the foot of the bed. Kaede watched as her father reached out to the Queen, to Karina, placing his large hand on her shoulder. 

"Ka- uh, Queen?" he asked and Kaede rolled her eyes at his awkwardness, god, why was her Dad so uncool. Kotetsu didn't seem to notice her at all and instead shook Karina's shoulder gently. She remained asleep. Barnaby reached out to take one of Karina's hands, pressing, jostling her gently at first and then slightly more vigorously before he placed her hand back on the bed. It was clear that no amount of shaking or talking would wake her. Both Kotetsu and Barnaby stood up straight and looked at each other. Kaede watched them, waited for them to do something, and when it became apparent that nothing would be forthcoming she frowned at them.

"Well?" she prompted but both men just looked away.

"Any ideas, Bunny?" Kotetsu asked and Barnaby gave him an unimpressed look before looking back at Karina.

"Well, it's clear that she isn't in any sort of normal sleep."

"Maybe she's frozen," Jack said and then looked like he almost regretted speaking when they all turned to look at him. "Uh, I mean, everyone else is frozen, so maybe she is too."

"Any ideas on how to warm her up? The entire castle is freezing," Kotetsu said and looked at Karina again. 

"Is this like real life?" Karina asked abruptly and Kotetsu turned to look at Kaede. 

"What do you mean?"

"Like, does she have the same powers as Blue Rose? Does she control ice?"

Barnaby hummed and looked thoughtful for a moment. "Sky High was able to fly and Fire Emblem turned into a Phoenix, a firebird, so I imagine that up to a point, their powers are sort of the same. I think we can safely assume that in Blue Rose's case, she should be able to control the ice in a way too."

"Would I be able to copy it?" Kaede asked and both Kotetsu and Barnaby looked at her for a moment and then turned to look at each other.

"Well," Barnaby said and Kotetsu turned to look at Kaede.

"You can try if you want," he said, taking a step back and Kaede shuffled forward. She reached out and placed her hand on Karina's arm and closed her eyes. She focused on that strange NEXT feeling and then opened her eyes with a gasp. Her vision turned blue and she felt a rush go through her, something that left her skin cold and her veins hot, felt like she couldn't breathe, her chest tight, and her heart beating hard and fast against her ribcage. The room swirled with wind, the windows rattling with it as it howled, through the entire castle and beyond like a terrifying beast awakening in the night. She went blind for a moment, overwhelmed with emotion and _power_ and she didn't see her father's terrified face, how he was trying to reach her, how the icy wind coalesced around her like an impenetrable wall. It felt somehow like it did when she used a new NEXT power, but maximized by a thousand, an unstoppable force, too much to be contained, and if she had been capable of thought, she would have been afraid. As it was she just hung suspended for a moment, a second, an eternity, until it all stopped just as suddenly as it had started. She fell, like a puppet whose strings had been cut all at once. 

"Kaede?"

Kaede blinked, looked straight into her father's worried face. 

"Dad?" She asked and noticed how he was holding her. The overwhelming feeling was gone as if nothing had happened at all in the first place. She felt almost underwhelmingly normal.

"What-" she started and then focused on the bed and then let out a soft 'oh'.

The Queen had awoken, was sitting on the bed her hand outstretched towards her, her eyes glowing blue, the wind swirling around her gently, dying down into nothing. 

"Are you alright, child?" she asked, sounding somehow so much older even though they weren't that far apart in age. Kaede nodded and sat up. Her father's hands tightened on her again and when Kaede looked at him saw his tense, worried face. She swallowed, feeling unnerved by the attention and the worry. She hated that face.

"I'm fine," Kaede said and this time pushed herself away from her father. She didn't want him to worry ever, much less about her. "Really," she repeated giving her father one last look before she stood up. Barnaby watched as Kotetsu clenched his jaw, watched as he swallowed the words of concern, watched as he reigned in his instinct to protect and let his daughter go. 

"What happened?" Kaede asked.

"You don't remember?" Jack asked, surprised. It hadn't lasted long but it had been terrifying, the howling, the wind, the _cold_ , how her eyes had gone white as she'd been lifted from the floor.

Kaede looked at him and shook her head. She had no recollection, just the sensation of something big happening. 

"You saved me," the Queen spoke as she swung her legs over the bed and stood up. It was a fluid, elegant movement, and nobody would have guessed that just moments before she'd been in the equivalent of a magical coma. She moved gracefully as she stepped towards Kaede and went down on a knee, her head bowed, blue hair flowing like water. "As the Queen of Winterfall, you have my gratitude."

Kaede blushed and looked around, not knowing what she was supposed to do. She had never met a Queen, even if it was Karina, much less had one of them bow to her. Kaede ended up bowing herself, falling back on her own cultural cues, feeling her face flush.

"No, uh, thank you, uh, you are welcome," she stammered out and, oh god, she was just like her dad wasn't she, oh god, _was she uncool too_? The Queen had stood up again and had turned to face the rest of the group.

"Who has come to my Ice Palace?" she asked and Barnaby subtly pushed Jack forward. 

"I-uh," Jack stammered and then squared his shoulders. "I am the Hero of the Lost Kingdom," he said, staring over her shoulder because he was slightly intimidated by her.

"A matter of urgency," she said with a serious nod and then lifted her hands and closed her eyes. There was wind again, less terrifying, less chaotic, a gentle swirl that pulled away what had remained of the cold, of the snow, until it coalesced in two shapes in front of her, first of wind and snow, and then glittery white. Two foxes, appeared in front of her, snowy white and fluffy and huge. Standing on all fours they reached her hip. They yipped and jumped around her, rubbing their faces against her armor, and she indulged them by scratching their hands. "Go," she commanded and the foxes yipped and then ran out of the room, taking the cold with them and the room seemed brighter, warmer, somehow, even though it was still night.

"Now young hero, please follow so I can give you that which you seek," she said and then stepped towards one of the windows which shimmered briefly before she stepped through it and vanished. Everyone stared agape for a moment and then the Queen reemerged with a frown. "I am quite busy," she said before she vanished again and Jack jogged towards the same window. He looked up. It looked like a regular window, like glass, and he looked back at the others who had also joined him at the glass. Kotetsu reached out with a hand and frowned when he encountered glass.

"What the hell?" He said and tapped on the glass with a finger. Jack stepped close again and reached out, expecting to touch glass and instead found himself falling through it. The last thing heard was Barnaby calling his name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are magical snow foxes and that's all you get as a pet shop AU lol. Anyway, from this point onwards I really have no idea where this story will go *shrug* I have some scenes written but who knows if they will fit in the story. I really need to work on how to better plan my stuff? also probably not do such a massive plot for a 30 Day challenge orz. Again, what I envisioned would be one single chapter has been split into 3 quite simply because I keep running out of time uwuuu. How do I type faster?
> 
> Having a keyboard with a working spacebar would be the first step lol....


	23. Poison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 23: poison

Jack stumbled through the glass, arms whirling to catch his balance after the sudden disoriented drop. He looked around and realized that they were in what he could only imagine was the library. A narrow but tall room, bookcases rising along the walls all the way to the ceiling, and covered with books and scrolls and paper. In fact, the library seemed to be overflowing with books, tomes strewn around on every surface, including tables and the floor. The Queen had turned around to look at him, her long cape draping all the way to the floor in midnight blue and Jack could now see that the inside of the cape looked almost like the night sky stretching out behind her, glittering and sparkling.

"Now young hero, you must appreciate that we both must have haste. You have yet to finish your journey and I must see to my people."

"Will they be alright? We saw them when we were making our way here, they were frozen," Jack asked, curious now more than intimidated because he hadn't actually understood what had happened out there. To his surprise, the Queen let out a deep, breath and she looked away, walked towards one of the bookcases.

"They will be, although I regret that they had to experience this... outburst," she said diplomatically. Jack fiddled with his shirt and then stepped closer.

"What, uh, actually happened?" he asked and watched as the Queen gently picked up one of the books on the table, her hands touching the cover delicately.

"I allowed myself to become overwhelmed during the final battle. We... you can see that although formidable, warfare is not the way we chose to settle our disputes," the Queen elaborated. "Even if we will rise to the challenge when no other option is left, we do not do so lightly. And I must admit, this battle..." she trailed off grimly. "We fought much harder and much longer than it was wise. We should have surrendered."

"Why didn't you?" Jack asked. "Why didn't you give up?"

She gave him a curious look for a moment. "I felt obligated to stand our ground, we are the second to last defender and the Kingdom of Eternal Flame and Heavens had already fallen and even though I have a duty to my people, we all have a duty to each other. We remember even now, that once our world was divided and it led us to corruption and destruction. As a Queen, I have vowed to do best by my people, and sometimes that means lending out a hand to others so we can all stand together."

"Even at the cost of the ones you want to protect?" Jack wondered, thinking about the guards and all the people that were frozen in the castle."

The Queen smiled then and Jack thought it made her look much younger. "They will be alright. My guardian snow foxes will gather the cold back and everyone will recover. Still, it shouldn't have happened, and that is a lesson on itself."

"So, they froze because of you?"

"Yes," she said and moved again, as if unable to stand still now that she had awoken. "Magic is a tool, and like any tool, it is as good as the one who wields it, but unlike most tools, it's a living thing. During the final moments, when it had become apparent that we were going to lose, I allowed fear and panic to overwhelm me, and I lost control over it. I was no longer governed by my thoughts but rather my emotions and the magic did what my fears told it to do."

"Freeze everyone?"

"Protect everyone," she corrected. "Although a noble desire, a fruitless one in this case for if it hadn't been for the girl, I would have not awoken, and my Kingdom would have been lost forever," she admitted quietly. "It is a mistake that I must endeavor to never repeat again."

"What... what did she actually do?" he wondered. The girl, Kaede, he'd gotten so far as to understand that she was Kotetsu's daughter, but he was still unclear on how she'd entered the dream or whether she was even really in the dream, to begin with. 

"I can't explain it exactly, but it felt as if for a moment, we became connected through the magic," the Queen cocked her head pensively. "Suddenly, the power had two outlets instead of one, and suddenly I was not as overwhelmed as I had been. It was enough for me to wake and to take back control over it and I'm glad I did, I doubt she would have been able to control it on her own."

"Do you feel in control now?"

She looked at him slightly surprised. "But of course. It is I who controls my power, and not the other way around," she said matter of fact, and Jack let out a soft 'oh'. She gave him a long steady look before she stepped closer. "I have been wrong before and I will be wrong again in the future. Mistakes are valuable tools, for they teach us how to be better so that in the future it won't happen again."

"But, you hurt the people you care about anyway," Jack confessed softly, looking at the floor. The Queen knelt down in front of him, sought out his eyes.

"I did, even if my intention was the opposite. At the time, I acted with the best of my abilities, based on the knowledge I possessed at the time. I can feel guilty about that, but what good does it bring me? I can't change what happened and guilt is like a poison, if I allow it to set roots, it will spread all over me, will overwhelm me just as my fear did, and it will paralyze me. And if I stop moving...then I have lost the battle for certain. Today I am wiser than I was yesterday. I will take my lesson, my experience, and make sure that something like this doesn't happen again. All that ever matters is what we do today with the knowledge that we have right now, and then make the best decision possible based on that."

Jack felt his side go warm and blinking he looked at his satchel, at the light that came piercing through it. He fumbled with the catch and then took out the small glass ball. The light swirled brightly in it. White and gold and blue streeks chasing each other in the small globe. The Queen smiled and stood up. 

"I believe that you have found what you were looking for," she said gently and then looked up over his head. When Jack turned around he saw the glass at his back shimmer and then disappear and then both Kotetsu and Barnaby fell through clumsily. Kaede stood behind him looking vaguely embarrassed by it all.

"The Hero of the Lost Kingdom has found that which he sought," the Queen said, standing up straight, and even though she wasn't particularly tall, Jack thought that she stood above them all. 

"Well, that's, uh, great, yes?" Kotetsu said standing up and reaching out to help Barnaby on his feet too. 

"It is," the Queen answered and then looked at Jack. "It is never wise to travel by night. You and your entourage can stay here tonight and rest then you can continue your path tomorrow," she said and looked over at the rest of the group. "We might not be known for our hospitality, but we have yet to turn away anyone who seeks solace," she said genuinely and Jack nodded, clutching the ball in his hands and feeling for the first time, hopeful.


	24. Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT DAY 24: true love's kiss

The palace came alive. 

It was immediately apparent that even though it still remained night-time, things had changed drastically in the castle. People abounded, guards and servants and other members of noble families, had all mobilized tending to the injured and to the palace itself. Candles and chandeliers were lit, casting away the shadows and the guardian snow foxes bounded up and down, gathering the rest of the wayward magic. The chill vanished with each moment that passed and it was clear almost immediately that even during nighttime, the palace never really slept. 

Kotetsu and Barnaby offered their assistance more than once and were kindly and firmly rebuked and it didn't take them long to realize why. It was clear that the help was not required. The palace staff moved in orchestrated harmony, clearing up the remains of battle and preparing the castle to provide shelter for those who would require it. People coming together, focusing on what needed to be done, and taking pride in their work. 

They were led to a wing of the castle in one of the turrets, that branched off into several sleeping quarters which looked like they might be used as barracks when needed. The rooms were small with two bunk beds in each and just enough space to walk in the between. The rooms all led to a common area that held a table with benches and little else. It was not a place for elegance, but it provided comfort and the truth was that Barnaby was feeling fatigued, which had started to worry him. Kaede had told them that in real life little time had passed, barely a few hours, but clearly, the dreamscape was taxing them mentally if not physically. He watched Kotetsu as he listened to the servant that was providing them with directions to washing and food. Ever since Kaede had shown up, Kotetsu had become tenser and tenser, and it got all the worse when Kaede had copied the Queen's powers. 

They were running out of time in more sense than one. 

They sorted out their sleeping arrangements with Barnaby and Jack sharing one room, and Kotetsu and Kaede the other. While Jack went to rest, Barnaby followed the servant to gather something to eat, hoping that even the semblance of normalcy would be enough to help. In the Kitchen, he was given a tray with hot tea, bread and fruits, and nuts. He was making his way back to the quarters when he heard Kotetsu and Kaede speaking, or rather, arguing, in the corridor. He stopped around the corner, unwilling to interrupt the conversation that he knew had been brewing for a while.

"I told you I'm fine Dad, really," Kaede said exasperated.

"Don't talk to me like that, I was worried," Kotetsu answered sternly.

"I know but I keep telling you that nothing happened and you are not listening to me!"

"Nothing happened? You lost consciousness, you were _not fine,_ " Kotetsu almost shouted and Barnaby's grip tightened on the tray. He never raised his voice, much less to his daughter. 

"Well, I'm sorry I don't remember," Kaede answered, petulant, and Barnaby could picture her crossing her arms over her chest, "I am fine now though. Really."

Kotetsu let out a sigh and paced. "You shouldn't be here, you need to wake up and leave."

"And I will, as soon as I figure out how to use Jack's powers, and then we will all wake up and leave," Kaede said.

"God, what was Muramasa thinking? He shouldn't have let you come here in the first place. I'm going to kill him when I get back."

"He can't tell me what to do," Kaede answered defiantly and Kotetsu turned to look at her.

"Yes he can, he is in charge of you," Kotetsu answered angrily, grabbing Kaede's arm and she wrenched it out of her hand.

"No Dad, that's supposed to be your job!" She said angrily and then Barnaby heard her running away followed by the slam of the door. Barnaby turned the corner and watched as Kotetsu stared helplessly towards the room where Kaede had run to. He was still standing in the darkened corridor, the main source of light coming from the room so that he was cast in shadows, and Barnaby thought that he had never seen him so devasted, so heartbroken in his life. Barnaby made sure for his heels to clip against the floor, afraid that he might spook Kotetsu, and sure enough, Kotetsu turned to look at him.

"Ah, Bunny," Kotetsu said, sounding weary and old and so defeated and Barnaby hated it. "Did you-?" Kotetsu trailed off and looked away.

"I didn't wish to interrupt," Barnaby explained softly and proceeded to enter the room and drop off the tray on the table. The doors to the rooms were closed. Barnaby turned towards the entrance again. Kotetsu hadn't moved, as if he had become rooted to the place as if he felt completely unable to cross the threshold. Barnaby walked back to him, reached out carefully, and placed his hand on his arm.

"Are you alright?" he asked softly, and he was standing close, so close that he felt Kotetsu's shuddering breath against his skin. 

“God damn it Bunny,” Kotetsu said and Barnaby didn't hesitate, closed the distance between them, and embraced him. He wished then that he was better at moments like these. That he knew the words to comfort him, to encourage him, to give him hope and solace. But Barnaby didn't know those words, had never learned how to comfort anybody in his life, had barely known how to be hopeful himself. So he did the only thing he could do, and held on to Kotetsu while they stood in the darkened corridor in a palace made out of ice, and let him lean on him even if just for a moment. 

"I don't know what to do," Kotetsu said at last into Bunny's neck, and Barnaby lifted a hand to brush it over the back of his head, pressed his lips against Kotetsu's cheek, a kiss so soft it barely counted as a caress. "I think she hates me," Kotetsu added and it sounded like a confession, something terrifying and frightening and Barnaby held him tighter.

"If she hated you, she wouldn't have come here to save you," Barnaby answered because even though it was clear that Kaede's feelings towards her father were complicated, Barnaby was fairly certain that hate wasn't one of them. 

Kotetsu squeezed him tighter for a moment before finally letting him go and stepping away. "She is right though, I'm supposed to be the one guarding her, and not the other way around. I think I've been a really shitty dad," Kotetsu said with a deep sigh and rubbed his face. Barnaby reached out and curled his hands around Kotetsu's wrists, pulling his hands away gently.

"I think that she is the one who decides whether you've been a good father or no," Barnaby said, "maybe you should listen to her, really listen to the things she tells you."

Kotetsu let out a chagrined sigh. "I just want to protect her, that's what I have always wanted for her."

"I know. And I'm pretty sure she knows that too, somewhere deep down. And I'm also pretty sure that all she is trying to do is protect you too. You two are more alike than you think you are. Hard-headed and stubborn and you care so much about each other, it makes you stupid," Barnaby said drily and Kotetsu gave him a tremulous smile. He took a deep breath and released it slowly.

"If she hears you, she'll get mad at you," he warned but his lips were curving softly to a side. He looked over Barnaby's shoulder towards the closed bedroom door. "I should apologize to her."

"You should," Barnaby said and with one last squeeze, released him. "But give her some time first. Have some tea, eat something, and then later when both your heads have cooled, you can try talking again. And this time you listen to what she has to say." 

"Yeah," Kotetsu said, and then gave a decisive nod. "Yeah, okay," he agreed and allowed himself to be led to the table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay I have a problem. Something unexpected has arisen and I won't be able to write on Monday or Tuesday. Since I will also participate in Fictober, I really only have this weekend to wrap up this story, or risk having updates take weeks again which I would rather not have. I really want to wrap this story up so I can fully focus on my other projects. Argh. It's aggravating that I keep having these setbacks with this fic, its like it's cursed.


	25. Drop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PROMPTS DAY 25: drop

Kaede slammed the door shut behind her, feeling upset and angry and on the verge of tears. She hated feeling like this like she had done something wrong when all she had tried to do was help. She paced the narrow room, kicked the bed for good measure before sitting down on it. Her Dad made her so mad sometimes, he never listened to her, it was like she didn’t exist sometimes. She was fine, she hadn’t even been scared during the whole thing with the Queen. He didn’t have to worry, why couldn’t he understand that? She sniffed when she felt the tears about to spill out. She hated crying.

There was a knock against the door and it took Kaede a while to realize that the sound had not come from the front door but rather from the door that connected the rooms. She stood up, rubbed her face on her sleeve, and then carefully opened the door just a smidge.

“Um, hi,” Jack said from the other side, looking as uncertain as she felt. Kaede opened the door more.

“Hi,” she answered and then they both stood awkwardly staring at each other.

“I’m Jack,” he said at last and Kaede realized that between one thing and the other, they hadn’t even greeted each other properly.

“I’m Kaede,” she replied.

“Tiger, I mean, Kotetsu is your dad, right?” Jack asked and Kaede nodded.

“Yeah, he's my dad,” she answered and looked at the floor. Suddenly she wasn’t even angry anymore, she was just sad and upset and it was all just stupid.

“Is everything alright?” Jack asked and when Kaede looked at him, he added, ”it's just, uh, I heard you talking and, well, it sort of sounded like you were fighting,” he trailed off, suddenly feeling unsure on whether he should have said something in the first place.

“He is just worrywart and he treats me like a baby,” Kaede answered and then walked away to sit back down on the bed. Jack stood at the threshold for a moment before he walked into the room too.

“Are you in trouble?” Jack asked and Kaede shrugged. She never had any idea if she was in trouble or not when it came to her Dad. Whenever they saw each other, it was like he was trying to tell her what to do, or how to feel, and what did he know anyway? He visited like once a month if she was lucky and then all they did was talk on the phone, and he was always so weird. Sometimes she didn’t know what to tell him.

“Did you really come from the outside?” Jack asked and the questions sidetracked Kaede from her brooding completely.

“Yeah, the hospital called me,” she answered.

“How did you come here? Do you have a psychic power too?” Jack asked and Kaede suddenly remembered that Jack had no idea how she had gotten there.

“No, not exactly,” she answered. “I can copy other people’s NEXT ability,” she explained and then proceeded to explain how her power worked and how she had gotten into the dream. 

“So that’s what happened when you touched the Queen? You copied her power?”

“I guess?” Kaede answered and shrugged. “It doesn’t work that way in the real world but maybe it’s different here because it’s supposed to be magic?” 

“So if you touch me, you could copy my power here too?” 

“Maybe? This is really weird so I don’t know if it would work just the same as it would work outside.”

“That’s really cool,” Jack said excitedly and then seemed to feel suddenly shy as if he was afraid of being excited. “So, when you copy an ability, how long do you have it for?” he asked more subdued and Kaede tilted her head to a side.

“It depends. Like, if it’s power like Blue Rose, then I will have it until I touch another NEXT. But, if it’s like a power like my Dad’s, that is sort of timed, then I can only use it once. But sometimes the powers also fade away on their own. Like, I had this power once where I could fly and I didn’t want to lose it so I tried really hard not to touch anybody else, but after three days it was gone anyway, so maybe there is a limit to my ability too. I’m still learning how to use it really.”

“I think you know a lot about your ability already,” Jack confessed and Kaede shrugged even though she was pleased.

“I’ve had it for years now, so I’ve had time to use it and learn it I guess. I want to try to not automatically copy every ability. Some people have really dumb abilities. I once copied a girl who had this skill where she could like, make water come out of her mouth. It sucked a lot and I could never control when it happened.”

“Oh, that’s kind of annoying I guess. So you don’t know how to automatically control the powers you copy?”

Kaede shook her head. “No. Some are really straightforward, and I also think some are just easier? I copied Blue Rose’s powers once and they were easy to use but there are others that I can’t control at all until I use them a lot.”

“Oh, so when you copied my power, did you, I mean, was it… easy… or…?” Jack trailed off into silence. He didn’t even really know what he was asking, but Kaede seemed so cool and in control of her abilities. And she wasn’t afraid of using them at all. “It’s just, I haven’t had my NEXT power for a long time and… I don’t know, I don’t… I guess I don’t know how to control it.”

Kaede looked at Jack for a moment. She was picking at a loose thread on the comforter. “I don’t know really how I got here,” Kaede said and then looked at the thread she was pulling. She continued unraveling it. “When I touched you, nothing happened at first, but then I touched you again, and the next thing I know I woke up next to my Dad. But I don’t know if I did something or if something else happened. Psychic powers are tricky,” she said, remembering Maverick’s ability, and how _weird_ it had felt to use it.

“Yeah,” Jack said, feeling discouraged.

“But, uhm, you are controlling all of this, aren’t you?” Kaede asked, feeling a bit worried but Jack just shrugged.

“It’s just a story I read,” he said and moved to sit on his hands.

“But, you know how to wake up, right?” Kaede asked and Jack hunched his shoulders.

“I guess...” he answered sullenly, “but what’s the point, everything sucks outside.”

“Don’t you want to see your mom again?” Kaede asked. Jack looked at the floor and kicked a leg out.

“All I do is make her worry,” he answered, and besides… besides, she was asleep too like they all were and it was his fault. All he ever did was ruin everything. 

Kaede rolled her eyes and then punched him in the arm, startling him out of his brood.

“Of course she worries, you moron, she’s your _mom_ , that’s what all parents do. They worry and they don’t listen,” Kaede said fuming, crossing her arms and getting angry at her Dad all over again. 

“If you agree with me why did you hit me?” Jack answered, rubbing his arm. She’d hit him really hard. Kaede turned to look at him exasperated.

“Well because staying is not going to make her not worry,” Kaede said and Jack sulked.

“You don’t get it,” Jack answered annoyed.

“Why? Because your mom is in the hospital?” She said and Jack felt his stomach drop, all the things he hadn’t been thinking about coming to his mind all at once. The argument he had with his mom, the ugly words he’d said, and how she’d fallen to the floor. His uncle screaming at him. 

“How-”

“The Doctor told me about what happened.”

“It’s my fault,” Jack said and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, “it’s because of me that she’s…. I’m only trouble, I’m always trouble,” he said, repeating the words of his uncle. 

“Did you mean to do it?” Kaede asked softly and Jack shook his head vehemently and rubbed the tears away. He felt ashamed, embarrassed, his face was hot and he couldn’t stop crying. He was so pathetic.

“No,” he hiccuped, “no I didn’t mean it. It was an accident.”

“Then I think everything is going to be fine. All you have to do is help her wake up.” Kaede said confidently and Jack looked at her, even as he rubbed his cheeks.

“I don’t… what if I can’t wake her? What if… what if she is forever like that?” Jack voiced his fear, his real fear, that this mistake was one he couldn’t fix. Kade looked away thoughtfully for a moment.

“If you stay here forever, then it won’t happen for sure. I think you can control your ability more than you think you can.”

“Really?” Jack asked, wanting desperately to believe, wanting desperately to be sure that he could help his mom. 

“Yeah, I mean, look at this place. You said it’s just a story but, you still came up with all of this. I’ve only seen this palace but it’s amazing, like a fairy tale. I don’t think I could do anything like this if I used your power.”

“You really think so?”

“Yeah. I think that you can help your mom, you just gotta try.” Kaede said and for the first time Jack thought that maybe he could


End file.
